


All's Fair in Love and War

by PrincessAutumnArcher



Series: Once Upon a Trope [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Belligerent Sexual Tension, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Loki Has No Chill, Magic, Not Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Rating May Change, Slow Burn, So I'm writing it, Trope Subversion, We were ROBBED of the MCU Magic Trio, no y/n
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2020-05-14 18:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19278847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessAutumnArcher/pseuds/PrincessAutumnArcher
Summary: After Thanos is defeated, everything is different. Yet everything must carry on. For Dr. Stephen Strange, that means a return to protecting the multiverse from any potential threats and putting up with incessant research questions from a promising acolyte of the Mystic Arts who can't quite seem to stop meddling with things she shouldn't. Loki's sudden return from the dead sets off every alarm in the Sanctum despite Thor's assurances that his brother has truly repented, so a deal is brokered to allow Loki to stay on Earth, as long as he is under the supervision of someone from the Sanctum at all times. It surprises no one except Loki when Stephen's overzealous apprentice volunteers for the task, but a deal is a deal, and if anyone can handle the recently resurrected God of Mischief, it's her.Stephen didn't exactly bargain on his apprentice becoming quite so integrated into the Avengers, let alone being sent on an undercover mission as Loki's wife. He's beginning to regret that deal.





	1. Chapter 1

“No. Absolutely not.”

Your voice is flat as you deliver your refusal. The blank steel in your eyes is enough to ward off any sane, rational person’s continued attempts at convincing you.

Unfortunately for you, Tony Stark is anything but rational (his sanity is there, you reluctantly concede, but it’s seemed to be slipping away at an increasing and concerning rate these past few days) when it comes to persuading people to follow his plans, and he shows no signs of planning to surprise you with surrender now.

“Look, you’re not just our best option—”

“What do you mean, _best option_?!” you practically shriek. “Why me and not one of the _actual_ , honest-to-God _spies_?” You fling an arm out in the direction of the balcony, where Bucky and Natasha are leaning out over the sunset and chatting.

Tony offers you a long-suffering smile but doesn’t miss a beat replying: “ _Former_ spies, they’ll have you know.” He pauses, letting you sputter in indignance for a second before cutting off your incensed retort, “And both of them are way too recognizable. Nat blew all her covers taking down Pierce, if she doesn’t lay low we’ll be swarmed with…well, we’ll be swarmed, let’s leave it at that. Eyeliner over there has a metal arm and isn’t supposed to be alive. Not exactly prime undercover material.”

“Bucky could wear a jacket and gloves for the mission, it’s getting chillier,” you offer feebly, knowing that Tony’s got you backed into a corner.

He fixes you with an incredulous stare. “It’s the middle of June. Where is your mental weather station that it’s _chilly_? I need a local agent, not a _loco_ one.”

“Tony, I _cannot_ do this. People will perish,” you plead, but Tony remains unmoved, still fixing you with that look of utter, unyielding determination you’ve never seen anyone but Pepper defeat.

“He’s got magic, can’t he just… _whoosh_ someone into looking different? Someone other than me,” you argue anyway, throwing your hands out and flailing them in a dramatized imitation of spellcasting. Your refusal to say _his_ name feels like your last barrier against allowing this plan to manifest as reality, and you cling to the ambiguity of the pronoun like a lifeline.

“It’s a simple illusion!” you wail desparingly as Tony’s expression doesn’t budge except for the tiniest trace of sympathy flickering over his eyes.

“No can do,” he tells you firmly, every word hitting you like a hammer in the gut. “I did ask,” he adds, a hint of irritation coloring his voice, “and he refused the idea. Said it’d be too taxing on his magical energy reserves, especially if he needed to keep the illusion up at all times and be ready in case something goes wrong.”

“Bullshit!” You roll your eyes and huff, outraged, “There’s no way it’d exhaust him that much, it’s beginner stuff! He probably just doesn’t want to waste his _precious_ magic on a pathetic _Midgardian_ with imposter magic coming from a trinket who’ll never live up to his godly standards—”

The wry look on Tony’s face stops you mid-sentence as it hits you that this is probably _exactly_ what Loki said whenever Tony confronted him—which, you have to admit, was nice of him to do on your behalf. Then again, Tony probably did it out of consideration incentivized at least a little bit by knowing that the same conversation between you and Loki would have ended with a significantly larger amount of collateral damage and potentially Thor hunting Tony down for damage done to a friend or family member.

You sober in the silence, realizing grimly the fact that Tony let you rant and get so far into your Loki impersonation almost certainly means that there’s no way you’ll convince him to change the plan.

You throw one desperate line out in a last-ditch attempt to avoid the fate barreling towards you: “He’ll never agree to it. Come on, Tony, you know what he thinks of—of us.”

 _Of me_ , you almost say, but bite it back. Admitting that Loki’s distinctly acerbic treatment of you has gotten under your skin won’t do anything other than maybe making Tony feel a little bit more sympathetic. Maybe if you guilt-trip him enough, he’ll build you something cool when you get back from this mission.

 _If_ you get back from this mission—you don’t discount the very real possibility of one of you killing the other, or at the very least, not bothering to cover the other’s back. You wouldn’t put it past Loki to look the other way if you were to conveniently fall off a cliff.

Tony’s voice softens in sincerity for a moment as he says, “You know I wouldn’t ask you if I had another choice.” He pauses, and you get the feeling that there’s something he isn’t telling you, but before you get the chance to dwell on your suspicions, Tony’s clapping you on the shoulder and turning to leave, calling cheerfully over his shoulder,

“He’s already given consent. See you bright and early tomorrow, Mrs. Odinson!”

A rumbling noise of confusion sounds from behind you; you turn to see a thoroughly confounded Thor standing in the entrance to the room, evidently having walked up just in time to catch you new moniker. His cerulean eyes return to your face from the spot where Tony disappeared around the corner, taking in your miserable expression before he offers hesitantly and not without a touch of awkwardness,

“Congratulations?”

Your frustrated groan only serves to add a smear of concern to his growing perplexity.

 

Loki never misses the privacy of his chambers on Asgard more than when his brother bursts in unannounced and uninvited, and this is no exception.

“ _Loki!_ ”

Thor’s voice booms by nature, and when he intends to yell (as he does now), the effect is not unlike a storm-born clap of thunder. Loki flinches despite himself, but before he can move towards the door from where he sits, book in hand, it slams open and a very agitated Thor has taken its place.

“Loki, I know you enjoy your secrets and your trickery, but this has gone too far! How could you do such a thing?”

Oh. This is nothing new, merely Thor’s standard speech upon discovery of some new instance of Loki’s mischief. Loki’s initial streak of alarm dilutes into mere annoyance as the dark-haired god turns his attentions back to the book in his lap, already letting Thor’s distress fade into white noise.

This becomes a tad more difficult when Thor, upon realizing that his brother’s attention has returned to the words written under his fingers rather than the ones coming rapid-fire from his mouth, seizes Loki by the collar and shakes him as one would a naughty dog before shoving him down rather violently against the floor, pinning him there with Mjolnir when Loki, spitting curses as the book sails from his hands, nearly throws him off with his wriggling.

“This is a new low, even for you, brother.” Thor’s shock has begun to melt, allowing anger to rise up in its place, a process Loki observes with a growing sense of foreboding. “You certainly have the right to seek out pleasures of the flesh if you so desire them, but it was expected that you exercised caution along with those desires! Doing what you’ve done is bad enough, but to _her_? Of all people, Loki! She deserves this the least! Norns know you abuse her enough.”

Thor shakes him again, jostling Loki’s skull—briefly, Loki wonders if he is beginning to suffer cranial damage from all the times Thor had attempted to express displeasure or discipline by physically shaking it out of him, because the strings of words erupting from his brother’s lips continue in their abject failure to make any kind of logical sense.

“And what, exactly, have I done that is so unforgivable?” Loki snaps as heatedly as he can given the fact that the ceiling appears to be both blurry and speckled with dots of light, trying to think of what reason Thor could have possibly justified barging into his rooms, brandishing Mjolnir as if there were demons just around the corner, and attacking him for. Another rough jostle sparks Loki’s irritation into full-blown anger and he snarls, “By the _Nine_ , Thor, let me go or—”

“Or what, you’ll stab me?” Thor demands, his grip tightening. Loki frowns, releasing the dagger he’d conjured with an odd sense of dejection.

The cold edge in Thor’s voice dulls even the promised fun of stabbing—whatever Thor seemed to think he had done, it must be serious. Thor barely glances at the blade as it vanishes with a burst of green light back into Loki’s magical pockets, opting instead to plant Mjolnir more firmly on Loki’s chest and stand, heaving a great, heavy sigh as he looks down on his still-struggling brother.

“Thor, what in Hel’s name are you prattling on—”

“I am _prattling_ ,” Thor bellows, neck bulging in rage at the resigned nonchalance of Loki’s question, “about the fact that you have secretly bedded one of our teammates—one of my _friends_ —carelessly begotten her with _child_ , and intend to force her into marriage despite her obvious lack of any desire to be sworn to you!”

Loki, for the first time in his very long, very meticulously kept memory, is speechless.

Thor stares at him, nostrils flared. Apparently taking Loki’s stunned silence as a lack of remorse, he begins, “I am no saint, Loki. I cannot fault you for wrongs that I must also plead guilt to. But can you not see the despicable nature of your act? You degrade her daily, heap insults upon her race, her planet, her existence—and then you seduce her, wile her into your bed with some swee—oh _Hel_ , you did properly obtain her consent at least, didn’t you?! Loki? Loki, swear upon our mother that you did no—”

“That I didn’t _what_?” Loki snarls, face dark with both exertion and anger. “Use my seiðr to coerce an unwilling woman into spreading her legs for me? Take a fighting body to bed and silence their screams? Think only of taking my pleasure from a living corpse as it sobbed beneath me? You insult me, brother, deeply, suggesting that I would ever do such a thing. No,” he adds irately at the uncertainty written on Thor’s face, “not even then, when there was a hateful, merciless hand twisting my every word and action. Never. I swear it on Frigga.”

“I…” Thor falters, the momentum of his well-intentioned rage suddenly leaving him hanging. Loki lets him struggle, watching stonily for a few seconds as the redness slowly drains from Thor’s skin and he waffles about, pinned to the spot by the cold accuracy of Loki’s assumption.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Thor says finally, his voice low as he wraps a hand hesitantly around Mjolnir’s handle. Loki lets out an expectant sigh of long-suffering relief, waiting for the crushing pressure on his chest to abate, but Mjolnir remains firmly atop his ribs.

Loki’s glare is scalding as he casts a pointed glance at Thor before shifting its target to the hammer keeping him down; Thor grumbles huffily and lifts the hammer before setting it easily on the ground beside Loki’s head.

Loki heaves a deep breath, reveling in the return of his ability to expand his lungs to their full extent, before springing up and pouncing on Thor, seizing his elder brother and kneeing him in the gut. Thor doubles over, wheezing under the unexpected attack, and Loki settles back on the couch, giving his book a fond brush as he closes it and sets it safely aside.

“One day, you will remember how much I despise interruptions to my reading,” Loki tells Thor evenly as the storm in his eyes settles back under a plane of glacial ice. This is how the two brothers play their game, how they’ve always settled their matters as siblings in childhood. Neither of them see any reason to stop now.

A silver blade slides into existence in Loki’s palm and he continues, an edge coming into his voice, “Satisfying as it is to wonder if you’ll empty your stomach over my carpet, your suffering gives me no more idea of what provoked your idiocy than your words. Explain, brother.”

A wicked gleam comes into his eyes as the corner of his mouth curls up and he adds, words shimmering thinly under the suggestion of held-back laughter, “And don’t make me regret not stabbing you. It’s been a while, you know.”

Thor’s narrowed gaze jumps from Loki’s familiar green-blue gaze to the dagger in his hand until Loki rolls his eyes and relents, flexing his hand so the weapon slides smoothly back into his sleeve like a cat retracting its claws.

Thor says your name gruffly, taking in how Loki’s eyebrows lift a fraction of a hair, eyes widening almost imperceptibly at the sound before his cool, calm mask returns and he reclines against the cushions, examining his fingernails idly.

“The two-bit so-called sorcerer’s little lapdog? What about her?”

“She’s your wife-to-be.” Thor’s voice is suspicious; Loki certainly seems to truly have no idea what is going on, but your anguished expression as you fled from him earlier felt too sincere to have merely been a performance. Loki, on the other hand, had millennia of lies and mischief-making under his belt. “Your pregnant wife-to-be,” Thor adds pointedly.

Loki shrugs and waves a hand dismissively in the air, nose wrinkling slightly in distaste with the gesture. Indifferent celadon eyes turn to meet Thor’s stormy gaze as Loki says in a voice of utter boredom, “Unfortunate, but even I am not entirely above certain…influenced mistakes.”

Thor is loath to blindly trust Loki’s unconcerned, seemingly bald-faced response after countless times of doing just that and consequently finding himself worse off for having placed faith in his brother. Yet as he stares at Loki’s sprawling figure, he cannot find it in himself to think his brother—the man who has lied, fought, _died_ for him (as well as against him, Thor admits) time and time again—is so callous as to lie to him and dangle what little brotherly trust exists between them over a precipice like this.

Loki is many things— _infuriating, sneaky, cunning_ —but he is not cruel.

With this in mind, Thor resigns himself to attempting damage control as best he can. After all, he was once a king; balancing the needs of his subjects to protect them all had been a necessity. For his brother and for you—subjects of his love, as it were—Thor can take up the responsibilities if not the mantle once more.

So he swallows his doubts, prays for the sake of his two subjects, and asks Loki quietly, “You’ll provide for the child?”

It’s as much a command as it is a question; Thor’s apprehension sets gravel into the core of his voice and the steel in his eyes darkens them to an unforgiving duo of blue and ochre separated from black by a single shade each. Crownless he may be, but Thor is a king nonetheless, even if his kingdom’s existence is temporally selective.

Loki pauses at his brother’s gravity, pale fingers stilling from their repetitive drumming pattern over his stomach. A smirk spreads slowly over his face and he scoffs, a devilish half-mirth twisting over his tongue as he replies, “If she decides to keep it.”

Thor’s face falls slack, twitching slightly as though he can’t decide whether to be aghast or supportive of the suggestion and all its implications. Loki speaks into his brother’s silence, his voice light as if discussing nothing more than the weather:

“You said it earlier, brother. Certain cautions were forgotten in the, ah, heat of the moment.”

A tiny smile plays at the corner of Loki’s mouth as he chuckles at some joke unknown to everyone but himself.

“She has just as much right to the child as I do. I assure you, she was very much present and involved in its conception. Seeing as it’s her body housing the child and not mine, I can hardly begrudge her if she chooses not to sacrifice nine months of her already pitifully short life carrying the unwanted offspring of a monster.”

“Brother.”

Loki’s responding chuckle is mirthless and his voice dry as he looks indolently at Thor, but a small, appreciative smile touches his lips before he adjusts his gaze to a point in the distance and continues,

“You know just as well as I do that the woman hates me. I’d possibly be the least surprised person on this planet if she decided not to keep my child.”

Thor remains silent, although the furrow of his brow and the set of his jaw suggest that his silence is not for want of words. Loki raises his eyebrows promptingly, hand twisting out in a gesture that is half-invitation, half-challenge.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Thor says finally, shifting his weight and crossing his arms.

Loki rolls his eyes, obviously unmoved, and Thor fights the urge to bash some sense into his stubborn brother’s greasy little head.

“She never impulsively speaks ill of you,” Thor points out, receiving only an unenthused glare in return. “That’s more than you can say for half this team!” Thor protests.

“Yes, your dear friends certainly make no great mystery of exactly how little they _tolerate_ me,” Loki snaps back, leaning off the couch in his sudden, cold vehemence.

Thor continues as if Loki hadn’t spoken, ticking his list off on his fingers. “She asks after you when you’ve had a tantrum,” Loki ears perk at that before he bristles, but Thor barrels over his indignant noise of objection, “she banters with you, you can’t tell me you don’t enjoy those little word games, she hasn’t complained _once_ about how much of an ass you are—”

At Loki’s immediate unconvinced and unamused stare, Thor adds reluctantly, “To me. She hasn’t complained about you to me,” and continues despite Loki’s displeased, sardonic muttering. “She agreed to stay here in the wizard’s stead to supervise you so that you would be allowed to live as you please.”

“Ah yes, the _glorious_ modicum of freedom I am afforded,” Loki spits bitterly, hands gesturing grandly, “kept confined to the building like a chained dog. I am so grateful.”

“You ought to be,” Thor glowers menacingly for a moment, eyes flickering with a hint of lightning. When it has no effect other than provoking yet another huffy, jaded groan as Loki drops his head back luxuriantly against the arm of the couch and drapes one ankle over the other, Thor presses his face into his hands, gritting his teeth.

“She’s done nothing to you,” Thor beseeches his brother, “and you’ve treated her worse than you did the palace servants when you were a child.”

“Untrue,” Loki says curtly, without looking away from the ceiling. “As far as I recall, I haven’t ordered her to create any catastrophes that I can swoop in to clean up in the hopes of winning Odin’s favor, nor have I secured any promise of hers upon pain of death, nor have I turned any of her drinks into snakes mid-sip. Shall I continue? In retrospect, I’ve treated her rather well.”

Thor’s martyred sigh is apparently deemed unworthy of Loki’s attention, but the shiver of metal as he hefts Mjölnir crosses the threshold; Loki’s eyes widen slightly and he quickly shuts his mouth, crossing his arms petulantly in lieu of a verbal retort.

“Don’t you remember the first time you met?” Thor asks, perhaps a bit more imploringly than he intended. His voice is earnest as he prompts, overlooking in his eager recollection how Loki’s jaw clenches, “She was excited to meet you, bowed in the old Asgardian fashion and everything. Even after Strange told her the worst about you, even after she lived through Ne—”

“I remember.”

Loki’s eyes are still firmly fixed on some invisible spot beyond the ceiling, but his voice is clear and sharp as a razor. Thor falls silent, studying his brother with a cautious eye. Loki is unreadable, body languid as he sprawls over the black leather of the couch despite the frigid tension in his voice. His face is smooth, a blank mask through which his eyes reflect rather than reveal.

“She carries my child through a series of errors both of us are to blame for. I am marrying her to take responsibility for my actions in a way that is accommodating of this realm’s social and legal practices. Marriage is not such a binding agreement on Midgard as on Asgard. Once the issue is resolved, the marriage will be dissolved and we can go our separate ways as much as Strange’s leashes will allow.”

“…I see,” Thor says finally, to break the silence, although nothing could be farther from the truth. He had come here searching for answers, but the curious glassiness in Loki’s voice has returned more questions than he arrived with. Playing Loki’s mind games has always fatigued him ( _why waste such energy to twist your tongue into convoluted rings when speaking directly—and maybe flourishing a weapon for emphasis—solved problems so much faster?_ ), and Thor would be lying if he said he wasn’t somewhat looking forward to escaping now that his brother had turned the tables and nudged him into the lower position. “I am…glad to hear that you have given the matter such thought.”

Loki makes a soft, affirmative humming noise and retrieves his book at long last, thumbing through to find the page he was so rudely interrupted on.

Thor stares at him, stationary despite the clearly intended dismissal; it occurs to him with a pang of sorrow that has been so long since he ever truly thought to understand Loki, and now that he is trying harder than ever, he finds his brother nearly a stranger, the workings of his mind hidden behind mirrored shields that Loki would rather die for (again) than let fall for an instant.

After Sakaar and Ragnarok, Thor had hoped to truly reconcile with Loki, but Thanos had taken the option from him before it ever had a chance to be realized. And now that a second opportunity had been delivered to him with Loki’s inexplicable return, it seemed that his brother harbored no intentions to reciprocate any of Thor’s soul-baring.

The thought saddens Thor as he grasps Mjölnir once more and makes at last to leave. Loki’s voice stops him, calling his name far more gently than Thor thought was possible. He turns, face softening when he sees that Loki has set the book aside and is fixing him with a look that Thor wouldn’t exactly call _pleading_ , but definitely some distant cousin of the word.

“Don’t tell anyone.” The boredom and irritation have fled from Loki’s voice, leaving only his raw, naked request. Loki hesitates, searching Thor’s eyes before he adds slowly, “Please.”

His fingers twine tightly around each other but Loki holds Thor’s gaze steady. It is evident to the thunder god that the utterance of the unfamiliar word, and to _him_ no less, cost Loki its proper, excruciating pound of flesh. Thor is not so optimistic as to hope that Loki’s request comes purely out of concern for the mother of his unborn child, but he does know Loki well enough to know that he never utters words of supplication lightly.

“You have my word.”

And so Thor nods somberly before taking his leave, turning over these new developments as he wanders through the facility, subconsciously making his way to the training rooms. Perhaps physical exertion will relieve some of the load on his mind.

Loki waits, eyes trained on Thor’s disappearing figure, until the door has clicked shut and he is sure that his departing brother is out of both eyesight and earshot before allowing an alarming grin to spread over his face.

The god of mischief stands, slides his book back into its rightful place, and considers the impressive array of titled spines before him for a moment, eyes skimming over gilt letters without reading a single one. Then Loki throws his head back and laughs with wild, reckless abandon, collapsing back onto his couch as the sound of his unfettered delight surrounds him.

As his laughter fades, Loki straightens, tugging at the hems of his clothing until his appearance is polished and perfect, and strides purposefully to his bedroom. He hadn’t expected his half-facetiously placed condition to Stark’s proposal to have been met, let alone so quickly and in such a deliciously entertaining series of events, but this…this will prove to be quite a bit of fun indeed.

Loki chuckles to himself as he begins rifling through his closet, very happily choosing to ignore the rising wave of second thoughts in his mind in favor of imagining how to execute the next steps in his newest plot.

Who would have thought Thor’s admirable sense of morality and penchant for leaping to conclusions would have worked so well in his favor?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's a married couple without the rings to prove it?  
> In which you resolve not to be a rom-com cliche, Loki confronts his (gasp) conflicted emotions and realizes that perhaps death has changed him, and Tony keeps snacks everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teensy tiny reference/implication of smut at the very end of this chapter, just a heads-up.

It’s far too dark for your brain to be functioning well or be happy about its semi-active state when your alarm goes off, so you don’t feel guilty about smashing a fist down on it to stop the infernal blaring that had roused you.

The thing falls to the floor and you close your eyes for a blessed second before heaving yourself up from the warmth of your bed and scooping up the fallen alarm clock to deposit it back on your nightstand. Grumbling to yourself, you trudge to the bathroom and begin the familiar routine of readying yourself for the day, somewhat glad that the drowsiness clinging to your mind has the added effect of keeping your apprehension for the mission ahead at bay.

_Just enjoy your last morning of peace while you can,_ your subconscious whispers as you change out of your pajamas. You bite your lip and reprimand yourself; worrying through your last moments of blissful solitude won’t make them last any longer, and you suspect that there’ll be plenty to moan about when you’re left with Loki for however long this mission ends up lasting.

The kitchen is empty when you pad in, thankfully, and you have the luxury of listening to the gurgle of the coffee machine in relative peace while you help yourself to the rather impressive stock of food Tony keeps on hand. It’s a far cry from the much more limited supplies you keep in your little cubby on Bleecker Street, and a welcome change—one of the few comforts you’ve found in the relocation to the Avengers Facility upstate.

You fiddle with the sling ring on your left hand as you eat, mind jumping despite your efforts to apprehensive thoughts of what awaits you. It’s not that you _hate_ Loki, exactly, although your interactions with the man do generally leave much to be desired. In fact, he’d be so much easier to deal with if you did hate him instead of harboring your current muddled sentiments of frustration and admiration.

If you’re completely honest with yourself, part of your conflict with Loki stems from how severely his rejection of your attempts at companionship stung. You sigh into your mug, drinking deep as your thoughts wander back to your disastrous first meeting with the god.

_“Don’t say anything to him.” The Sorcerer Supreme’s voice is tight and clipped as always, but under the perpetual trim-cut efficiency of his words you detect a hint of urgency to the order._

_Walking a bit faster to match his pace—the man practically_ marches _, even by city standards—you retort, anticipating a flurrying round of sharp but heatless banter, as is routine, “What, I’m coming along to look pretty while you get to piss him off?”_

_Strange halts, so abruptly that you would have kept going if his hand hadn’t shot out to snag your arm. There is no trace of the usual cynical humor in his grey-blue eyes, and the starkness which replaces it catches you by surprise._

_“No.” His hold on you is tight—not tight enough to hurt, not at all—but unusual. Even though you’re his personal apprentice, Stephen almost never touches you. You stare at him perplexedly as he continues to fix you with that intense sobriety that usually means the Sanctum is in need of protection, and a wave of panic grows in your chest._

_As if he can sense the mounting turmoil within you—and to be fair, he probably can, and on several levels—Strange cracks the ghost of a smile over his face, although his eyes remain hard. “You’re here to stand beside me and look intimidating as hell so nothing like New York happens again.”_

_You fall silent, eyes wide as every readied protest shrivels away on your tongue, and Strange hauls you along. This time, his touch feels like comfort, a reminder of his solidarity as you both step through the spark-ringed portal. You know that it’s for your benefit; Stephen Strange would never go to these extremes if he weren’t genuinely convinced that Loki Laufeyson still posed a threat to Earth._

_Still, you can’t tamp down all the questions that have been brewing in your brain since that morning, when Strange unceremoniously asked you to accompany him after sensing the arrival of the Asgardians in Norway. Sure, the Sanctum’s library was a fantastic resource for ancient magic, but its tomes were largely limited to the Mystic Arts used by sorcerers on Earth. Loki was of another world, with another magic coursing through his veins. It wasn’t your fault you were so curious…_

A grimace works over your face and you shove a bite into your mouth, chewing furiously as though you can change the past through sheer aggression.

_“Oh, I’ve been waiting for this.”_

_You blink at the unexpected comment before registering the alarming fact that its speaker is rushing towards you, outstretched hands wrapped lithely around twin blades. Your training takes over and before you quite realize what you’re doing, you’ve leapt in front of Stephen, sigils blazing; ignoring someone’s shout to stand down, you spin a portal directly in front of you to the mirror dimension and send it forwards with a flick of your wrist._

_It envelops the man before you and you close the portal with a twist of your hand; Strange reaches out to place a cautionary hand on your shoulder, but you haven’t quite finished yet._

_Another quick pivot of one hand opens a small portal to your room back at the Sanctum; you dart a hand in, grab the coil of runic rope you’d spent hours charming, and close the portal before stacking a series of sigils over your arms—defensive on your right, offensive on your left._

_You think Strange’s eyebrow lifts at your experimental technique before you direct your attention to opening a portal beneath your feet. You drop down into the mirror dimension yourself, rope at the ready and an adrenaline-fueled burn coating your limbs._

_The fractals surrounding you bear no sign of the black-suited man or his daggers._

_“Shit!”_

_Before you can open another portal, the space behind you shivers and the presence of unfamiliar power surges over you, crackling in your blood with the scent of smoke and crushed ice. You whip around, lashing out with the rope; a pale hand catches it, the rest of your assailant’s body becoming visible with a ripple of green and gold._

_Loki Laufeyson stands before you, examining the carved rune of binding tied to the end of your rope._

_“Nauthiz,” he reads incredulously, and you can’t tell if the odd note in his voice is admiration or disdain. His head lifts, eyes flicking to yours, and you hate yourself when your mouth goes dry under the cold intensity of his glacial gaze. “As merkstave, too. Clever little mortal.”_

_The glint in his eyes sharpens as his lips curl up in a merciless sneer. “But not clever enough, I’m afraid.”_

_He yanks on the rope and you jerk forward with a shriek, straight into his waiting arms._

_When something cool grazes the thin skin under your chin, you aren’t surprised, but you expected the hard edge of a dagger against your throat, not long, nimble fingers. Loki’s hand presses harder against your windpipe and you realize in the shocking clarity that comes with the lack of oxygen that he can’t afford to kill you—you’re his only way out of this dimension._

_The knowledge gives you a burst of rash determination, so when Loki’s mellifluous voice murmurs darkly in your ear, “Take us back, or you will see how even benevolent gods have their limits,” you grin and knock his bluff and the hand around your throat away with the power of a stacked sigil, ducking and winding around him as you pin his arms to his sides with the rope._

_A hard kick to the back of his knees sends him crashing to the floor with a snarl, but his arm snakes out from a gap in your binding and seizes your ankle as he falls, bringing you with him. You glimpse the metal of his blade from the corner of your eye; desperation clutches you and you cry, “Isa!” frantically, abandoning all hope of otherwise overpowering Loki._

_The rope constricts immediately as the second rune activates from where you’d braided into the rope itself and its carved wooden form manifests at the other end of the rope, driving Loki’s breath out harshly as his grip releases you; feeling a shadow of assurance return to you, you extend your energy and tilt a flattened hand. The plane of the mirror dimension shifts accordingly, tipping Loki’s writhing body as you jump into the corner and hook your fingers around the rope by his elbow._

_Your sling ring is a steadying pressure around the fingers of your left hand as a final portal back to the Norwegian coast opens beneath you and Loki. Something tings sweetly, bell-like, against your ankle._

_Too late, you look down at Loki’s wicked grin of self-satisfaction, then at the_ Isa _rune dangling from his fingertips. He inverts it deliberately and your brows knit together in bewilderment; the rune is a vertical line—it doesn’t have a reversed form for the merkstave to draw power from._

_Loki’s smirk widens at the sign of your confusion and he says in a voice writhing with glee, “I suggest you study up, little sorceress.”_

_Smoke trails from the tip of the inverted rune and winds over his body, viridian light growing over its path as if harvested from Loki’s skin, and when you blink, the rope is gone and ashes float down from his legs. He extends his hands with a flourish and your vision absolutely turns red._

_“Surprise.”_

_His lofty voice sounds in your ears and in your head, echoing in two channels, and you find it in yourself to be both awed and infuriated at the feat. And then the two of you are entangled in a frenzy of limbs and blades and radiant light as you crash down hard beside Stephen and Thor; your mortification duels with your rage, fueling you until you find yourself locked into place, straddling Loki with your final offensive sigil centimetres away from his temple despite his vise-like grip on your wrist, while the blade of his dagger presses an icy line into the side of your neck, stopped in its bloody procession only by the revolving amber of your last defensive sigil._

_His eyes burn with a curious pale fire, unthawed and mirrorlike; even with the savage sneer distorting his face, Loki retains the same haughty elegance in fury as he does in calm, and you can’t help but think that if he were to lop your head off, even the spurt of your blood would be in a graceful arc to follow his motion._

_You’re vaguely aware of Stephen and Thor breaking away from a serious discussion to rush over to where your and Loki’s energies flay against each other, sparks flickering in the strained air surrounding your taut bodies._

_“Took you long enough. That’s why I like to put the asshole in a modified Möbius plane.”_

_Strange’s voice is back to its usual clinical efficiency, but when he places a firm hand on your shoulder and comfort comes in a wave of his familiar magical energy as he pulls you up off Loki, you realize that your trembling must have really unnerved him._

_At any rate, it unnerved_ you _, and the feeling didn’t abate as you back away from Loki as he rises to his feet, glaring at you with those gilded green eyes. But as he stands to his full height, you can see bruises and raw splotches beginning to form on his pale skin where your rope bit harshly and where your sigils landed._

_A wave of mingled remorse and horror crashes over you as you realize that not only have you just attacked alien nobility, but the man you had secretly hoped to learn more from. Even in justifiable defense, your actions do not bode well for the prospect of getting answers to the questions stored up in your head._

_You twist away from Strange’s hand, ignoring the way the Cloak of Levitation flares out after you._

_“Crown Prince Loki,” you call, striding forward until you rest a few paces from the brothers. Thor looks at you in surprise, one arm extending across Loki’s chest as the latter’s nose creases in distaste, his eyes flat. The crisp, alluring fragrance you now recognize as his seiðr perfumes the air between you and you know without looking that the god has summoned yet another twin set of daggers to his hands._

_You hold Thor’s eyes for a moment more before turning to Loki. The scent of his seiðr makes your blood sing and your head spin for reasons you don’t think you want to understand, and you bite down on the inside of your cheek for a moment to regain every drop of clarity you can. It would not do to make a mistake now, not if you ever wanted to gain access to the wealth of magical knowledge in Loki’s mind._

_“Crown Prince Loki of Asgard,” you repeat, fighting the urge to squeeze your eyes shut in an effort to remember his titles, “Odinson, the Rightful King of Jötunheim, God of Mischief.”_

_Silvertongue isn’t an official title, is it? You swallow and decide to exclude it in favor of continuing; the look on Loki’s face doesn’t give you the impression that he has any particular patience at the moment for your uncertainty._

_Thor tenses, his eyes darting between his adopted brother and you. Your throat feels ragged, but the words come out clear when you speak next._

_“I ask mercy for what I have done against you. I acted in accordance with the laws of my lord and realm,” you pause, realizing too late that following old Asgardian style of a clemency plea compels you to swear your utter fealty as a subject to the Sorcerer Supreme, but continue, “If it please you, I lay down an offering for your highness.”_

_You clap a hand to your chest, over your heart, and kneel before the brothers, extending one hand, palm up, towards Loki as you train your eyes on the ground at his feet._

_Thor gasps audibly, and you hear Stephen’s faint, exasperated “Jesus Christ” from behind you. Well, if the Sorcerer Supreme hasn’t marched over here and shut your plan down, it can’t have that horrible of an effect on the future of the Earth, can it? The optimistic theory bolsters your courage and keeps your unfolded hand up, offering Loki an open door into your mind._

_You can feel his imperious stare on the nape of your neck and you tense as his feet move closer, anticipating a cool touch on your skin and the icy, foreign presence of his mind in yours. Instead, Loki speaks, every word as concise and clean as a death sentence:_

_“At last, it seems the mortal has learned its place. Keep your driveling thoughts to yourself. I have no need for them.”_

“Should have listened to Strange,” you grumble to yourself as you realize that you’re gripping your mug so hard your fingers have gone white. “Asshole.”

You stare at the wall without seeing it. Of course, after the catastrophe of your first meeting, you had tried to apologize. Profusely. Repeatedly. And every single one of your attempts had been met with disdain if not ignored completely. So naturally, you had volunteered to be the unlucky soul from the Sanctum assigned to supervise Loki so Stephen himself would be free from the task.

Admittedly, you had gone overboard, both in the response to his attack and in your attempts to make up for it, but it still irked you that Loki was too unwaveringly petty to consider _not_ insulting you with every other sentence.

It was partially why you had fought so hard to persuade Stephen into letting you be the one to move upstate into the Avengers facility and keep an eye on Loki. Letting someone else take the fall didn’t sit right with you, and it fell a tad too close to giving Loki the satisfaction of having driven you away with a few jibes. Just because he wouldn’t teach you what he knew didn’t mean you couldn’t try to glean something from observation. Besides, who out of the other sorcerers would stand a chance against Loki’s love for constant caustic repartee?

You sigh heavily as you wash your dishes. It’s been nearly two months since you first met Loki, and almost as long since you moved from the city. Two months of debates, fielding thinly veiled insults (when Loki bothers to veil them at all), and finding ways to retort that got your message across without actually risking lethal retaliation—Stephen had sworn you to that as a condition of you taking the post, and you had to admit, working around it had greatly increased your creativity. Yet you had nothing to show for it but a few tidbits on rune casting, and even that had come from you sneaking glances at Loki while he cast spells. Every time you think you’d grown closer to the god, maybe even built up something like a tentative acquaintanceship, he lashes out at you as if to savor the taste of your wild, confused hurt and retreat.

Your phone pings with a message from Tony to meet him at the Quinjet in five minutes, so you hoist your bag over your shoulder, remind yourself that Loki had agreed to work with you, and head to the field while trying to ignore the apprehension gnawing at your stomach.

 

Tony is already waiting by the helipad field when you arrive, but he isn’t alone. Your eyebrows rise a tad at the sight of Thor beside him, looking uncharacteristically grim in the dim pre-dawn greyness. Tony hadn’t mentioned Thor being involved with the mission, but you suppose that he’s there to see his brother off. After all, Thor has mentioned to you before—as if it weren’t painfully obvious by the way that he looks at his brother sometimes—that he wants to try rebuilding his relationship with Loki—it makes sense that he’d want to show his support. You wave to your friends in greeting, glad that Loki isn’t there to scold you for making him wait.

Thor breaks into a smile as you approach, but panic flashes over his face as you reach out for your usual side-hug. You falter, drawing back in uncertainty, and he reaches for you immediately, smile returning—but there’s something off in the careful, delicate way that he pats your back, as if he’s afraid he’ll break you. He can’t be this concerned about you spending time alone with Loki, can he?

You frown questioningly, and Thor’s smile takes on a soft, twinkling light as he smooths a hand over your back soothingly, as if sharing some wonderful inside joke you’re supposed to be a part of. You offer a baffled smile in return as Thor suddenly grabs your bag from you, lifting it over his shoulder.

“I can carry my own—” you begin to protest, but before you can finish your sentence, a sharp voice slices through the air.

“And what are you doing with my beloved wife, brother dear?”

Loki’s voice holds all its usual elegance and unaffected frost, but there’s an unmistakable barb in his words despite their delivery. His face is dark despite the crooked grin hanging from his lips as he looks you over, eyes lingering on Thor’s hand as it rests over your ribs, offering you unexpected support. It’s strange to see anything other than repulsion in his eyes as he looks at you, and it unnerves you how much you like the feeling of what must be mock fondness and possessiveness.

It must be a trick of the light.

Loki’s eyes dart to meet yours and his grin widens, a glinting razor blade in the shadowy air. It sends a dangerous thrill through your body, singing your nerves like lightning, and you find yourself transfixed. The air is heavy with the promise of rain, but your breaths feel curiously empty, and you realize that you’re leaning towards Loki, seeking the scent of his seiðr in its absence.

“Alright, since the Crow over here is so eager to start, let’s get this show on the road. Chop, chop!”

Tony claps his hands and walks up the ramp to the interior of the Quinjet before anything can come of the congealing tension on the helipad. Head down, you snatch your bag back from Thor and follow Tony, hoping that the prickling burn on your cheeks will fade before either Odinson has the opportunity to take note of it.

 

Tony has you up in the air and on your way in a matter of minutes; you toss your bag down and walk over to where he’s adjusting controls and whistling to himself, pausing now and again to issue an occasional command to the AI or request a figure. He glances at you as you come to a stop behind him, draping your arms over the back of his seat, and raises his hand in a brief wave before turning back to the jet’s controls.

“What’s up, Miss Matrimony?” He pauses a beat. “Wanna blueberry?”

You raise an eyebrow and wave away the proffered carton. “Don’t think that nickname’s one of your best, Tony.”

“Eh, you gotta give me something better to work with.” Tony shrugs, and although he doesn’t look up from the switchboard, you can see the flash of his teeth as he grins. A moment passes before he speaks again, voice carefully measured and light.

“You nervous?”

The horizon suddenly seems a safer choice to receive your regard, and you stare out the cockpit as you chew the inside of your cheek for a moment, deliberating your reply.

“Yeah, little bit,” you finally admit, fiddling with your sling ring as you look into the sunrise.

“Good. Keep on your toes around him.”

Your head snaps to Tony, mouth forming an ‘o’ of shock. He looks up at you and grins, and you suddenly realize with an overwhelming sense of relief that there’s no way he’d let you go off with a man he barely trusts—Tony’s got too much of a heart for that, no matter what he insists to the contrary.

“Got you a little something,” he announces as he stands, and you don’t miss the way he plants himself between you and Loki’s line of sight when he reaches in a pocket and pulls out a long, flat box.

Over his shoulder, you see Thor’s head turn slightly when the latches on the box click open, but what’s revealed as the matte black lid lifts away catches your attention again. Tony lifts out the slimmer, smaller of the two rings from where it’s nestled in black velvet and holds it out for you to see.

You lean in, marveling at how the gold seems to glimmer with its own light; from every angle except head-on, your new wedding ring seems like a simple circle of metal, but when Tony lies  it flat on his palm, you realize that the band is thicker than you thought, creating a ridge that Tony appears to have decorated with etched coils and three sparkling diamonds on each face. Tapping his index finger to his lips until you nod in acknowledgement of the unspoken instruction, Tony slides a thumb halfway around the circumference of the ring until the edge of his nail rests against the central diamond.

“Press three times,” he mouths, “for SOS.”

His eyes are guarded when you look up from the ring, but his shields don’t cover the worry welling in his gaze despite the gruff mask he wears. Your heart leaps and after a moment of painful consideration, you lurch forward and pull Tony into a hug.

He’s warm and very human against you, right down to the uncontrollable, panicked laughter that issues from his mouth as he pats your back awkwardly with one hand. It reminds you of what happened the one time you tried to hug Stephen; the memory is comforting if bittersweet, and you’re grateful for it. You release Tony after a few seconds with a mumbled apology when you see the minor discomfort on his face. Shame pools thick in your chest.

“You make a weird Bridezilla. Stop sweating it, alright?” Tony cracks a smile and you nod, relieved but unable to fully erase your remorse. You need to get a grip—if you’re like this before the mission even starts, how are you going to survive when it really is just you and Loki?

Tony flashes you three fingers as a reminder before he hands you your ring and turns to call across the Quinjet, “Rock of Ages, Point Break! Get your alien butts over here, gotta get a debriefing in and give you your cover gear before we land.”

Both Odinsons stand and walk over—well, Thor walks and Loki saunters, carrying himself with a feline grace that’s both enticing and terrifying. You eye him warily, glad when Thor reaches you first so that he and Tony flank you.

“Alright, so everyone knows you two are gonna be married for the duration of this mission, that means rings,” Tony hands Loki the remaining ring, a wider version of yours without the inlaid diamonds, “and fake names.”

Tony doles out a plastic packet of documents each to you and Loki; you flip through yours past a passport and driver’s license until you get to the page on your cover’s background, skimming the sheet as Loki does the same.

“The rings are gonna be your comms,” Tony explains. “They’re one-way audio transmission, so you won’t be able to hear anything from our end, but we’ll be monitoring the signal from the facility. If we get any info that might help you, it’ll get to you through a portal,” he nods in your direction, “so stay sharp.”

Tony fixes you with a look that you’ve learned means he’s about to say something you won’t like. “Speaking of portals,” he starts, eyes flicking down to your hands. “You’re gonna be undercover. Deep undercover. The sling ring’s a dead giveaway if they know what to look for, and we’ve got every reason to think they do.”

Your heart sinks.

The sling ring is possibly your most prized possession, both in terms of utility and sentimentality—you can’t remember a time since starting to study the Mystic Arts that your hand has been bare of it for more than a few minutes, and the prospect of plunging into unknown danger without the ability to bend the multiverse is beyond frightening. You would still be able to cast simple spells and draw on sigils, of course, but so much of your prowess was integrated with using your sling ring to manipulate dimensions…. Your fingers curl unbidden into a fist, the metal of your sling ring digging into your flesh like a promise.

Loki clears his throat and your gaze snaps up, body tensing subconsciously as you prepare yourself for whatever pointed comment he’s about to make about your abilities being so dependent on a piece of metal.

Instead, he says evenly, “If you want it nearby so dreadfully, I can imbue it with some of my seiðr and keep it in the same way I do my daggers. It’d be easily summonable, no more effort than a blade.”

You gape at him, dumbfounded; the lack of malice in his voice is new (and refreshing), but never in your wildest dreams did you expect Loki to offer his aid so…gallantly. Thor beams at his brother, but Loki’s eyes are fixed on you, waiting for a response without any of the thorns he usually sprouts for you to fall upon.

Before you can mold the thoughts milling in your brain into a coherent answer, Tony cuts in flintily: “Yeah, so she can be completely dependent on you and you get to blackmail her with it? Nice try, evil mastermind. Besides, I already have a solution for Glinda here.”

You can’t even find it in yourself to be annoyed at the new nickname as Tony points imperiously at your new ring.

“It took a while, but I tested a couple of eigenvalues and isolated the local and emitted molecular oscillations of the sling ring at a few frequencies active during its most useful functions. Got my hands on a little bit of vibranium and time in the lab, and here we are—you’re wearing a sling ring two-point-oh, first of its kind. Little bit limited, but it should give you enough to work with for the basic stuff. Go ahead, give it a try.”

You stare at Tony in gratified awe before hesitantly slipping off your sling ring and sliding the new band on. It’s much lighter than you’re used to, and centered over the base of your ring finger instead of balanced over two fingers, but the instant the ring touches your skin you feel a crackling surge of familiar power as it focuses your personal magical energy and connects you to the realms of the multiverse.

As you concentrate and arrange your hands into the familiar position to create a portal, you realize what Tony meant by limitations; your connection to the magical network feels narrower, as if doors along a hallway that had all previously been flung wide open were now firmly shut. Still, it’s worlds better than nothing at all, and you say as much, noting in the back of your brain how Loki’s sour expression dilutes with a note of vague interest.

Your fingers trace a circle in the air, sparks flying from your fingertips, and you feel the invisible pull on the ring as a doorway to the mirror dimension unfolds in the air. Grinning so widely your cheeks ache, you dissolve the portal and lower your hands.

“Thank you, Tony. It’s fantastic. I…this really means a lot to me.”

You mean it. Tony had to have talked to someone at the Sanctum about this, probably Stephen himself; you know for a fact that information about the creation and composition of sling rings is stringently restricted (you may or may not have tried to do some unauthorized research), and there were certain elements that required a union of hard science and mystic artistry to understand, let alone replicate. Even with Tony’s genius, it would have been nigh on impossible to recreate a sling ring without some reference. He’d definitely gone far out of his way to give you some degree of comfort on this mission.

“You might be able to play with the mileage on it a little, but the only things I can guarantee portal-wise are the mirror dimension and any location within fifty physical miles of you. Spatial manipulation should work like normal, but I wouldn’t bank on it if I had a choice.”

Tony sounds unbearably disappointed with himself, so you amp up your voice with confidence five hundred percent past what you actually feel and lie, “That’s plenty, I don’t usually do huge spatial jumps anyway. Not really my style.”

Loki watches you carefully, arms crossed, and you get the distinct feeling that he knows you’re lying, but he stays silent, much to your relief.

“Great, keep the rings on so they can calibrate your resting vitals while you two read up on what you’re going up against. Quinjet’s on autopilot for the next hour, so Point Break and I are gonna go play some paper football. Play nice—but not _too_ nice.”

Tony waggles his eyebrows at you in a futile attempt at comedy as he herds Thor off, leaving you somewhat alone with Loki. You suppose you should get used to it and acclimate yourself while you have the chance, so you give him a tight, tentative smile and hurriedly walk over to one of the chairs to review, missing the small curve of his lips in return.

You lose yourself in the shuffling papers as you read through the mission info, a welcome respite from the anxiety brought by the new weight on your left hand and of Loki’s gaze as he settles on a chair across the bay.

You’re headed to Lotus Isle, a seaside resort on the French riviera that caters to the mildly rich—not truly wealthy at Tony Stark’s level, but still tax brackets above the tiny Queens studio you’d lived in before moving into the Sanctum. Several of the hotel’s guests had been recently busted for hard drug possession—all of them couples, mostly newlyweds, and none of them had survived long enough to be taken in for questioning. Intelligence pointed to a bigger deal using the couples as cover or very expensive mules and disposing of them once they became a liability—a drug cartel, maybe, but their targeting strategy was odd. Why the emphasis on couples?

You flip quickly past the pages detailing the deaths and stop on the profiles of potential suspects. A grainy picture, captured from some security feed, took up half the page, blown up to center the man sitting casually at a bar. He was looking at someone across the room, dark eyes focused beyond the camera. Wavy brown hair curled over his forehead and licked at the nape of his neck, its soft delineations standing in stark contrast to the fierce jut of his jaw and the austere press of his suit. A quick skim told you that this was Dorian Martell, president of a company specializing in homeopathic medicines and holistic therapy. No red on his ledger, aside from a nasty divorce a few years back that had landed him with a court case for domestic abuse, but he’d been acquitted—and liberated of a few hundred thousand dollars.

You flip the page.

A headshot greets you alongside a few smaller surveillance pictures. Martell’s alleged partner in crime was a rising star in the modeling world; fashion houses were flocking to her to book shows and contract her to walk for them during fashion weeks seasons in advance. Clean ledger for her too, although it seemed that information on her was harder to find; all the report told you was that she had been credited professionally as Ellaria Blake and was in her late twenties.

You stare at her headshot for a moment, taking in the sultry suggestion of a pout and glinting aqua eyes set like jewels above prominent cheekbones, slender face framed by tousled raven hair. She had different hairstyles and colors in all the other pictures, but there was a certain self-satisfied magnetism present to identify her no matter how her physical appearance changed.

You squint for a moment at a snapshot of Blake at the lower corner of the image grid; she wore her hair black and in a choppy, angled bob, feline eyes covered by giant, darkly-tinted sunglasses as she strode across the street. Something in the picture seems familiar, and you inhale sharply as you realize that the woman reminds you somehow of Loki.

You squeeze your eyes shut, sure that the early morning and stress have just pitched you something like a visual Freudian slip; when you stare intently at the candid picture again, Ellaria Blake’s nose is slightly shorter, her mouth a bit wider, and she looks more like someone inspired by Loki and his fashion sense than a fully-feminine version of him. It must have been the head to toe black and the way her glossy navy nails were filed to dagger-like points, you decide.

A quick, cautious glance across the jet tells you that Loki is thoroughly occupied with his own packet, one leg crossed high over the other as he studies the papers, brow furrowed ever so slightly in concentration. He shuffles one page to the back of the pile in his hands, and it strikes you that he looks almost…peaceful.

It’s strange, seeing Loki without a smirk or a readied jibe on the tip of his tongue, but stranger still how endearing the man is in his state of total focus. Without spiked haughtiness fencing his regality like thorns, it’s suddenly easy to recall the admiration you’d held for Loki before he’d proven himself a judgmental, stubborn, _obnoxious_ jerk. His head tilts to one side and his eyebrows lift almost imperceptibly, lips pursing as he apparently reaches some interesting tidbit on the page. Very easy.

Loki suddenly shifts his weight and you whip your gaze back to your papers immediately, straightening them on your leg in an attempt to hide your staring. A hot flush prickles up the back of your neck and you hunker down in your chair, wishing you still had your sling ring to fidget with as you tried to concentrate on the words in front of you.

 

Oh, what Loki wouldn’t have given at that moment for the chance to push Thor out of the Quinjet. The dark-haired god reads over his false identity’s background for the seventh time, barely managing to keep his studious expression in place as his brother’s voice rises over Tony’s in a triumphant yell.

Thor wasn’t supposed to be here. He wasn’t supposed to have accompanied Tony to the helipad, wasn’t supposed to have been on the Quinjet at all, but here he was, flicking a folded bit of paper jovially between Stark’s steepled fingers, and Loki was fuming.

He had been on edge the entire time Thor had hung around, unable to stop his eyes from flitting nervously between his brother and you whenever the two of you drifted more than twenty paces within each other. Loki’s nerves had all but shrieked bloody murder when Tony had handed out the rings and Thor had ended up beside you.

Loki was a planner. He was a schemer. As such, he was accustomed to adapting, to weaving new solutions to any obstacles that might arise to derail his meticulously calculated devices. But this was just…Thor knew too much and yet too little, and Loki was thoroughly unwilling to risk his brother letting something slip to Stark, or worse, attempting to be _supportive_ to you about the child— _his_ child—supposedly growing in your womb and blowing up all of Loki’s lovely, delectable, chaotic planning before it even had a chance to get started.

His eyes slide over to you once he’s made certain that his nonplussed expression is firmly back in place, but he can’t completely hide the curiosity illuminating his cunning, pale eyes.

Loki slowly rotates the new band around his left ring finger as he watches you bury your head in your papers, tension evident in every taut line of your body. He’d never expected Stark to actually go through with his condition for his help on this mission—or for you to agree to the premise. He’d resigned himself to continuing this act of princely loathing forever—not that it was particularly difficult, given the fact that it wasn’t really an act for the others, especially your snotty master Strange, but it was no fun watching you bite your lip like a beaten dog when he had meant a comment solely in jest.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Stark had tried to find an alternative but had ultimately failed, hence his own being informed about his partner’s identity by Thor, the day before he was scheduled to leave—or maybe it had just taken the self-proclaimed genius that long to tinker away on these little gadgets. Of course Stark wouldn’t trust him not to extort the innocent apprentice on loan from a fake little sorcerer Loki made no secret of his distaste for.

Loki’s face softened for a moment as he watched you scribble some sort of note in the margins. It wasn’t often that he regretted things, but your first meeting had managed to score itself a slot on that oh-so-selective list.

You’d humiliated him, he attempted to justify in his head, rather fruitlessly. You’d humiliated him, and in front of the stupid wizard, too! Could you truly blame him for reacting so coldly?

A small noise ripples over from across the jet, something between a hum of interest and a cleared throat as you lean in to mark something on your paper—Loki isn’t sure why you insist on these tangible reminders in the first place, not when you know full well that these papers will be shredded and burned before you even step off the Quinjet, but it’s somehow…endearing. You tap the end of your pen against your lips pensively and Loki is reminded of his own question.

Yes, he answers himself with a sigh. Yes, you could very well blame him for acting like a spoiled branch of the royal family tree, because he had. You had willingly offered him a free romp inside your mind in retribution for the little scrapes (and significant damage to his pride) you and your little rope had taken from him, and he had rejected your attempt at peace like a sulky child.

It wasn’t as if you were simply an idiot with a penchant for optimism, either: you had lived through the terror he’d wrought not so many years ago, and you’d still tried to appease him with something most people in your position would rather die than willingly offer to him. You’d obviously done your homework on Loki and his brother, and you’d remembered nearly all his official titles—Hel, you’d done more than Odin, who had never recited anything more than Loki’s adopted patronymic unless Frigga had forced him into it.

And your spellwork…yes, your lack of experience had betrayed you and Loki wasn’t being entirely unkind when he mused to himself that some of your casting was a tiny bit sloppier than it should be, but you’d been facing a _god_ …. Loki’s fingers silently traced over the expanse of his thigh, sliding over the shapes of the runes you’d been clever enough to look up and trap him with— _you’d thought to study the magic he was made of,_ he reflected in awe—and the fierce look on your face when you had shoved Strange aside to face Loki head-on as he rushed at you with daggers drawn was simply…sublime.

Loki still dreamt of that face sometimes, radiant in fury and the light cast by your sigils as you met him fearlessly.

Sometimes in his dreams, you’d clash against him, and as your energies mixed, trembling violently in the air, your lips would crash against his with just as much force. You’d melt into him and he into you, but still the kiss would be sustained by belligerent, relentless hunger, flashing teeth just as intrinsically involved as plush, reddened lip and bold tongue. You felt almost scorching under his hands, as if you would sear him alive given the chance, and it made Loki feel like he was being reborn.

On very, very good nights you’d tear savagely at his clothing while he simply vanished yours, and the searing heat of your lips and your very wet tongue would wrap around his shaft while he lapped at the sweet, musky slick between your thighs. These ambrosial dreams came very rarely, usually on nights when the small, tentative kindnesses you’d shown him built up like pressure behind a cork, and he had the exquisite torture of parrying verbally with you the next day until some entrenched, subconscious sense of guilt for ravishing you in a sleeping fantasy made him slice too deep and drive you back to where you’d started.

Most of the time, however, Loki dreams of the face you usually wear in his presence; curious but guarded, seasoned with just a tad more than a pinch of resentment. It stings more than he likes to admit, seeing you smile and laugh so easily with the other Avengers, especially with his brother, but Loki refuses to bend his pride any more than it’d already given.

But he had a plan, Loki reminds himself, fingers tapping on his leg restlessly. He had a plan, and it was going to be glorious, and he’d finally be able to clear the air between the two of you. Maybe then you would engage in the little spars he was loath to admit were often highlights of his day with a smile rather than a furrowed, half-resigned grimace.

“Landing in ten,” Stark calls suddenly from the cockpit, and while Loki merely grunts in acknowledgement, you offer up a response and a request for a blueberry.

Loki watches in mild, masked interest as you add, “Toss it. Towards the windshield.”

Stark looks bemused but complies, flicking a berry in the air towards the sky. Just before it splatters against the glass, a ring of sparks swivels open and the trajectory of the tiny blue sphere carries it through. A second portal opens a few feet in front of you, level with your head, and the blueberry soars through, landing solidly in your waiting mouth.

Chewing through your grin, you pump a fist in the air and pivot in your chair, intending to turn all the way to face Tony, but something in Loki’s face catches your eye and you stop halfway through your motion. You hadn’t even realized he had lifted his head from his reading to pay attention to your little trick, and an odd sense of prideful satisfaction works its way through you.

“I wanted to get some practice in,” you say as you lift your left hand, fingers splayed so that the growing sunlight glints off your ring. The smirk that cocks Loki’s lips in response is free of malice, and you feel your own lips curving up at the sight before you break away from his piercing gaze, suddenly afraid of how easy it is to forget the turmoil you’ve gone through at Loki’s hands when he graces you with a sweeter performance.

“Ring works great. Thanks, Tony!” you call in his direction, fingers curling into tight fists.

This was not going to be easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice long update this time! Sorry about the giant chunk of italics, I know it's a bit of a text-dump, but this is the best option I could figure out with Ao3's formatting rules and all. Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which you are invited to a party, Loki gets excited, and you are conflicted.

“Welcome to Lotus Isle, Mr. Hollins. We’ve reserved room 1463 for your stay, but I’m afraid we haven’t quite finished preparing the room yet. You’re welcome to leave your luggage here at the desk and relax in our lounge in the meantime—complimentary, of course. I’ll have a porter take your bags up to your rooms for you once it’s ready, it shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

Loki’s arm slides comfortably around your shoulders and you’re forced to put considerable effort into repressing the startled jump your body instinctively wants to launch into at the unfamiliar pressure.

“That won’t be necessary. If it’s a matter of mere minutes, we’ll just head up now.” As the concierge’s lips part, her customer service smile growing a tad more fixed, Loki adds firmly, “My wife is _very_ tired, I’m afraid, and we’d both appreciate a bit of rest before dinner.”

The way you slump into his side wasn’t all a testament to your acting skills; Loki had turned to flash you a bright, soothing smile after assuring the concierge that it wouldn’t be any trouble to just tell the maid yourselves and that he really was quite excited for this vacation, but the day’s journey had been just _so_ draining, didn’t you agree, darling? The sight of his flawless white teeth sparkling at you, fond concern in his eyes, had very nearly sent you into shock.

“Yes, sir. Enjoy your stay.”

Loki steers you away with one arm, waving over a porter and pointing imperatively at your luggage on the way to the elevators. Thankfully, the ornately decorated doors slide open to reveal an empty car, and Loki hauls you in without ceremony. The doors slide back shut, closing you in with him in a mirrored box. A crooked grin twists your lips as you are reminded of the last time you’d been in a space like this with Loki before the memory hits you in full force and your heart speeds up frantically as a scream builds in your chest at the lightness on your left hand.

“Can you stand?” he whispers urgently. The raggedness in his voice catches you off-guard after how smoothly he’d handled the concierge, and it hits you like a slap that Loki’s arm is still wrapped around you. He can probably feel the hysterical pounding of your heart, you think, and furiously will the organ to slow down.

“Of course I can stand,” you tell him, pushing his hand down and stepping away ever so slightly. You allow a hint of sardonic playfulness to enter your voice as you add, “Would you rather I not have gone along with your little ruse?”

Loki snorts, rolling his eyes with a little toss of his head. You crack a hesitant smile at the sight.

“You do that so often. I see where Sleipnir gets it from.”

His eyes widen and prim outrage colors his cheeks. “Why you—insolent mortal. That was in another lifetime.”

“You’re not denying it. Do you have to pay child support? How would that work, anyway?”

“You are insufferable.”

The elevator dings and stops two floors below yours, doors gliding open to allow another young couple to step in, so you tilt your head at Loki as you shuffle to accommodate the new passengers and reply teasingly,

“Well, yes. Isn’t that why you married me?”

Loki’s eyes flash at you and you turn your irrepressible gasp into an artificial giggle as his hand snaps to the back of your head and shoves your face into his chest as the rest of you stumbles forward to avoid falling into him. His lips brush the curve of your ear and a thick drop of shame plinks in your stomach at the tiny thrill his touch sends through you.

“Well, Odin knows it wasn’t for the unparalleled sex,” he mutters just loudly enough for you to hear.

The dark flush that sears your face is no charade, and neither is the fire in your eyes as you stare at him in mortified disbelief. He catches your wrist as you make to slap him, mischievous delight flickering in his gaze as he tells you sweetly,

“Don’t prod the bear if you can’t run fast enough, _darling_.”

Your eyes narrow, but before you can retort, a titter rings out from the other side of the elevator. One of the women who’d gotten on the elevator smiles at you as you turn, vague incredulity blooming over your face.

“Sorry,” she begins, brushing a shiny lock of blonde hair behind her ear, “you two are just really cute.” She leans in and whispers exaggeratedly, “Makes me wish this one,” she jerks her head towards the woman she’d walked in with, “was a _little_ bit more romantic sometimes.”

“Babe,” her partner says, half protest and half admonishment, with a mixture of apology and embarrassment on her face.

The first woman appeases her with a peck on the cheek before turning back to you and Loki. “We’re here for an anniversary. You?”

“Honeymoon,” you answer before Loki has the chance. You simper with all the passive aggression you can at his annoyed glance before returning to the couple. “Congratulations!”

She laughs again, lacing her fingers with her wife’s as they exchange a meaningful look. Evidently, a conclusion is reached:

“Thank you! Hey, a friend of ours is having a little party tonight in one of the penthouses. You should come, it’s going to be a lot of fun. East rooftop, Moonflower Suite. Just tell them that you’re friends of Daphne and Art.”

You’ve already got a plastic smile and excuse ready on the tip of your tongue when Loki’s voice flows into the air, buzzing with excitement.

“Daphne and Art, will do! Thanks for the invitation, ladies, we’ll be there.”

He squeezes your shoulder and looks at you with a smile, but there’s a clear warning in his eyes, so you swallow your outburst and nod at the two women blithely. Relief crashes over you when the elevator dings and the doors open on your floor, and you wave goodbye to Daphne and Art before you all but drag Loki down the hall by his tie.

“See you tonight,” he calls cheerfully as the elevator ascends once again. You whip around, yanking on his tie until he stoops under your grip.

“What was that all about? Why did you do that?”

One of his eyebrows arches and he replies loftily as he pries your hand off his tie, “For the same reason I refused that stupid concierge’s measly bribe of free alcohol.”

Loki strides off down the hall without a backwards glance, forcing you to rush after him to catch up. One of his familiar smirks flickers at the corner of his mouth as you demand,

“And that would be? God, you’re so difficult.”

The electronic lock beeps as he swipes the keycard over the handle. Before turning it, Loki turns to you with a savage grin and says lightly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “They were both lying.”

Your mouth opens in perplexed consternation as you follow Loki into the room. The door swings shut behind you and he reaches over you to flick the deadbolt shut, then raises his other hand and plants it against the door, caging you in with his body.

The long, pale fingers that had been at the lock slide suddenly through your hair until Loki’s thumb rests at your temple. Your instinct is to jerk away, and the fingers of your right hand twitch, ready to call up a portal, but something in Loki’s eyes stops you.

He shakes his head once, slowly and gravely, and you lower your hand, although you cannot drain all the tension from your wrist. Loki’s eyes dart to your temple, where his thumb hovers a hairsbreadth above your skin, and you realize that he is waiting for your permission to do what he’d deemed useless two months ago.

Your breath hitches as you become so much more aware of the coolness of his skin leaching into yours. Loki’s eyes are a tempest of seawater and celadon shards, but in their intensity you find nothing but earnest honesty and a growing urgency. Whatever he needs a connection to your mind for, it’s clear that time is running out.

So you push down the bubble of panic and distress in your chest and nod slowly, eyes fixed on Loki’s because you know that the only thread of reassurance you have is that gloss of honesty in his glinting eyes.

The pad of his thumb touches your skin.

You jolt under his touch as the scent of his seiðr envelopes you, becoming more than just a fragrance, deepening and filling your veins, racing along your nerves as Loki melds mentally to you. It’s an electrifying sensation, so much so that you barely notice when Loki sidles closer, his legs brushing yours.

_There was no maid. They were busy bugging our room._

Loki’s mental voice is crisp and far more business-like in its efficiency than the tangible evidence of his body language, and the disconnect snaps you out of the weird trance the light, oddly tender circles he rubs into your temple had lulled you into.

_How do you know that?_

His nose twitches and you just know that he’s holding back an eyeroll—and possibly a head toss.

_I’m the God of Mischief, patron of lies._ Loki pauses. _You could have sensed it too, if you’d extended your energy. Not very difficult._

There’s a surprisingly low level of contempt in his voice, but the words still sting.

_Was a bit preoccupied with keeping you in line,_ you retort.

His eyes gleam as a rich laugh rings in your head. It makes his mental presence taste like smoky toffee, and you have to stop yourself from trying to suck the flavor from the edges of your teeth.

_You didn’t do a very good job of that, either,_ he admonishes, smirking for a moment before turning and stepping away into the room. The sudden silence and absence of his presence in your mind floods you and you wilt against the door for a second before gathering yourself and following, dazedly noting that the porters have beat you there with the luggage.

“Well, we’ve got some time before dinner, but we shouldn’t dawdle. After all, we’ve got a party to attend tonight.” Loki’s eyes are alight with danger, the contours of his face sharp as he walks over to the window and turns to you. “And I suspect we ought to dress to kill.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe wow so clever, naming them Daphne and Art(emis). Hehe I'm such a ho for mythologyyyyy (the bartender is totally named Apollo)
> 
> Anyways, thanks as always for the read! Let me know what you thought of this bit down below!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which introspection upon Loki leads to accidental flirting and Loki continues to play with his food.

When you got back to New York, you were going to _kill_ Natasha.

Well, first you’d thank her for lending you such a beautiful dress, and on such short notice. And then you’d kill her, because as utterly gorgeous as the dress was, the way its silky black folds alternatively cling to and drape over your form meant that there was virtually no chance you’d be able to blend into the background at this party, not while you were wearing something you were pretty sure you’d seen on a runway on TV recently.

Loki calls your name, voice effused with a hint of impatience. You continue to stare, slightly delirious with apprehension, at your reflection, eyes traveling over your bare shoulders, clavicle exposed under two thin straps that direct the eye down to where gauzy material hangs in a beautifully crafted swoop, framing the décolletage aided in its voluptuous appearance by clever seams sewn into the bodice.

 _Cute little thing_ , Natasha had said. _For infiltrating rich people parties._

Right. Because this filmy, diaphanous thing was certainly _little_ , but “cute” was far from the first word you would have chosen to describe it.

“Darling, are you almost ready? We need to head to dinner soon,” Loki calls, his impatience breaking fully through to the surface of his voice.

The sound of his feet padding over carpet towards the bathroom startles you into action, and you call back, “Yes, I’ll be right out!” as you hurriedly clasp on the necklace Natasha had given you with the dress. The fine gold cable is just a tad too long, and the pendant dangles awkwardly, jutting out from the furrow of your cupped breasts, but there’s nothing you can do about it now.

You pull open the bathroom door just as Loki raises his hand to rap against it. His eyes flit over you, and to his credit (or perhaps just thanks to his distaste), they don’t linger at the cleavage presented like a fruit platter. You’re about to send a silent message of thanks up to whatever deities might be listening when Loki cocks his head at you, eyes sliding back to where Natasha’s necklace coddles itself, and your prayer dies in your throat.

Loki’s lips curl in an odd smile that’s more unnerving than anything else, and suddenly his cool fingers brush your tender skin as he plucks the pendant from your cleavage.

Before you can do more than attempt to jerk away in belated outrage, Loki smooths his thumb over the pendant, and you feel his seiðr shiver over the gem and through the metal of the chain, raising goosebumps on your skin.

The fingers of his other hand rest lightly under your chin, keeping you from looking down at what exactly he’s done, as Loki tilts his head again, studying you with a brooding pensiveness that feels as though he’s pinned you under a microscope.

“Much better,” he says finally, and turns without another word, striding neatly to the door.

You stare after him for a second before slowly tipping your head down to discover that the obelisks of gold and diamond have been replaced by a glittering emerald crowned by tendrils of gold, finely polished and set so that the tapered, angular point of the gem catches the light and casts slender vanes of viridian light over your skin. Said point rests perfectly below the dip of your collarbone, and it hits you that Loki replaced and shortened the chain as well.

A hesitant touch widens your eyes; this is no illusion. The stone is real, as are the fine gold links that press icily into the skin on your neck.

Before you can wonder as to what happened to Natasha’s necklace, Loki’s irritated voice summons you from the doorway and you rush out, eager to get your performance of a lovestruck newlywed over with.

* * *

The elevator ride down to the resort’s own restaurant is awkward, mostly because there is an abundance of guests who are apparently also traversing the floors and crowding its lift system, forcing you to squeeze in tightly to Loki and make it look natural despite the stiffness in your muscles.

Your loving husband doesn’t exactly make the task easier for you, either. Sure, Loki loops an arm around your shoulders, hand pressing into your waist to tuck you against his body, but there’s an aloof disdain saturating his regard that, while directed at the other passengers, you can’t help but feel isn’t entirely separate from his sentiments for you and this charade.

Once you step out of the elevator and fully into the public eye, however, Loki transforms into the epitome of a doting husband, taking your hand as you walk side by side to be seated and running his thumb over your skin tenderly. The smile he sends your way as the waiter sets down menus on the set table is nothing short of dazzling, and you're fully unprepared for the smoothness with which Loki crosses in front of you to pull out your chair with a flourish.

The tiny “O” of your surprise quickly reforms into a gratified smile as you sit, smoothing your dress over your thighs and wishing it covered more than just that. Loki pushes your chair in just as fluidly as he pulled it out in invitation before taking his own seat, and you relax muscles you hadn't realized you'd tensed. Somehow, it's impossible to shake the instinctual suspicion that had warned you to subconsciously expect Loki to suddenly vanish the chair from beneath you or press a knife to your throat while pushing your chair in.

Loki's smile suddenly turns wry, as if he can see into your mind, and you belatedly check your mental defense. All your barriers are intact, with no signs of being tampered with, but Loki's expression remains unchanged, his cynical eyes boring into you.

“What can I get you to drink tonight?”

Your server's voice is a pleasant distraction from the glacial danger across from you, as well as the perfect opportunity to look away. Despite how your frazzled nerves scream for a sedative and the fact that Tony's card would ultimately pay for any of the very tempting fine wines printed on the menu in front of you, you know it's begging for trouble to go in tipsy tonight. You sigh reluctantly and ask for still water with lemon instead.

“Of course, madam. And for you, sir?”

You blink at the unexpected note of sympathy in the waiter's voice before you notice the smirk floating on Loki's lips. Your eyes narrow as he opts for the same drink but adds in a voice dripping with faux affection, "Going dry tonight, darling?" His eyes slide to the waiter theatrically, lush, suggestive laughter seeping into his voice as he sighs, "Oh, the things I do for love."

Your foot connects solidly with Loki's shin under the table as you smile placidly at him above it, but he doesn't acknowledge the blow apart from a widening of his devious grin. The waiter offers a friendly, bleach-bright smile for the table before leaving you both to look over the menu.

It takes all you have not to portal Loki straight into the mirror dimension and leave him there for the rest of the meal, and it's only by reminding yourself of everything riding on this mission that you manage to content yourself with gritting your teeth and promising yourself that once you get back to New York, all gloves are off, promises to Stephen be damned.

The waiter is back before your anger subsides enough to let you do more than glower at the list of dishes, so you scan your options rapidly while Loki orders _confit de canard_ and _soupe au pistou_ (in the suavest, most infuriatingly fluent way possible, because of course he speaks perfect French—or is just skilled enough at manipulating Allspeak to make it seem like he does. Both possibilities are equally likely, a fact that makes your blood boil in furious, begrudging respect.).

You decide that whatever you're looking at is appetizing enough and order with a confidence you don't feel, handing off your menu with a palpable sense of relief. The server trots off with your orders and you sip at your water a little desperately; Loki has apparently decided that your husband enjoys gazing at you with a tiny, adoring smile, and the sight is making your stomach flip about in a way that makes you dread the prospect of eating.

You make it through three minutes of silent waiting before Loki says pleasantly, "Mrs. Hollins, you're looking rather unwell. Are you feeling alright?"

You consider the possibility of “accidentally” spilling your water on him to shut him up before replying with a saccharine smile, “Nothing to worry your pretty, little head about, Mr. Hollins. I'm feeling perfectly fine, thank you.”

Loki looks genuinely concerned for a split second before his lips curve up in a manner you know all too well, lopsided smirk stinging the swell of his cheek.

“Such a sweet feeling, knowing my wife thinks my head is pretty.”

Exaggerated consternation pulls his lips into a pensive frown as Loki rests his head on one hand and muses thoughtfully, “Although I'm not sure little is really an apt description...”

“You're right,” you snap, “your echo chamber of a skull does have to house your massive ego somehow. And as for the other thing you like stroking, I did misspeak.”

Your glare is ineffective against Loki's smug, self-satisfied smile. In fact, he looks rather entertained by your fierceness, so you stretch your lips into as patronizing a smile as you can before telling him, “Little was far too generous a term. Tiny is much better. Microscopic, even.”

Loki's satisfaction remains unmarred, but you know your next words will find purchase, so it's with a wicked glee that you finish, "After all, Odin knows I didn't marry you for the unparalleled sex."

Loki's eyebrows slant down furiously and he actually jerks forward to slap his palm against the table, eyes glinting, as your sweet smile cracks under the unstoppable pressure of victorious laughter. After allowing yourself a few seconds of justly-won celebration, you collect yourself and grin radiantly at Loki as he seethes.

 

Loki is not seething. Loki is reveling, silently and unabashedly, because it has been an unspeakably long time since anyone has been clever enough to twist his own words against him like this (Loki doesn't give Thanos the honor of crossing his mind).

He hides his elation behind a mask of sore defeat, however, because Loki, in all his careful, meticulous planning, has not failed to observe how analytical of his behaviour you are, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his joy will be interpreted as cruel cunning, for why would the bitter, hateful Loki be glad to be bested?

So Loki conceals his deepening attraction behind a sour look and secretly savors the cocky lift of your eyebrow as you sip your water in satisfaction. He suddenly finds that he’s looking forward to the party, and so there’s a genuine gleam of anticipation in his eyes as he raises his own glass to toast you before taking a sip.

 

“Cheers.”

Loki’s eyes are alight with mirth when he toasts you, and your eyes narrow with the expectation of retaliation. Loki chuckles to himself, which serves only to heighten your suspicion, but by the time your food arrives, he still hasn’t enacted any petty revenge.

You watch as Loki cuts neatly into his food; his eyes catch yours as he raises a forkful to his lips and the corners of his eyes crinkle under a thin smile.

“Did you want to try some, my love?”

You drop your gaze hurriedly—there’s a strange heat prickling your cheeks and meeting Loki’s eyes only makes it worse—and mutter, “No, thank you” as you busy yourself with the food in front of you. The laughter that rolls from his throat is far more charming than you’re willing to admit, and the heat flushing your cheeks progresses to a burn.

Fragrant steam swirls up from your plate, tugging at your taste buds with the lush promise of rich, savory herbs, black pepper, and browned butter. You take a cautious bite, still half-expecting the decadent flavor on your tongue to suddenly become cold slime or something equally unappetizing, but your mouthful stays succulent all through your swallow. The next bite brings a bright pop of lemon to cut through the richness and you nearly shed a tear at the culinary harmony in your mouth.

By the time your plate is half empty (not a particularly difficult feat, considering the inverse relationship between the restaurant’s prices and its portions, and the fact that whatever you ordered is delicious), you’re starting to wonder if perhaps you’ve been too harsh on Loki.

He hasn’t actually _done_ anything to you since the beginning of the mission aside from the usual jibes, and even those have been considerably less vicious than you know he can make them.

Come to think of it, Loki generally reserves his most poisonous barbs for nights when the entire team (or whoever’s at the facility at the time, since most members of the Avengers have opted to live elsewhere by now) gathers with pizza, drinks, and the most painful memories that haunt them to embark on something that’s part brutal nostalgia and part coping method; Loki almost always joins in on the decimation of Thanos with a lashing savagery that had frightened you the first time you’d been a witness.

He usually offers up a few cutting remarks for Laufey too, although Thor generally spearheads that discussion. Depending on the day, Loki’s sharp tongue may slice into Malekith as well, or he may let Thor take the lead there as well while he abstains in favor of drinking deep and looking into the distance as an unfathomable pain drowns his features. Neither brother ever brings up their sister, and if Hela is mentioned at all it’s by Bruce, in relation to how her resurrected wolf nearly took a chunk out of his leg. The subject of Ragnarök is always a quick one, joining Frigga’s death in things that the two Odinsons refuse to linger on.

It had puzzled you at first to see how, even then, the brothers maintained their distance, dancing around each other as if one touch would set the other off. But with time, as you nursed your pizza and watched silently, you realized that the distance wasn’t born of animosity.

Both Loki and Thor mourned profoundly, madly, inoperably. The loss of their mother and of Asgard cut them both down to the soul, but the ways each brother attempts to close the gash couldn’t be more opposed.

When it first hit you, you had wondered how you hadn’t seen it earlier: Thor’s way of stitching his wound together is with blazing, furious roars punctuated by jerky punches in the air and white knuckles. The God of Thunder turns his lightning upon himself to cauterize his wounds. Watching the way his bared teeth shiver under glossy, trembling eyes as he shouts in manic, violent passion, you think that Thor would rather suffer the heat if it means he can watch his agony burn in the conflagration too.

Loki’s grief is different. He grows quiet, in a way that’s rawer than way he broods when plotting or simply thinking on lighter things. Where Thor explodes, Loki internalizes, folding into himself until he’s fully hidden behind silent mirrors, his pain condensed and forced deep into his body. The shell he leaves out for others to see is a placeholder, insurance for his aloof, uncaring image while the real Loki howls somewhere inside his mind.

Thor confronts his anguish in order to beat it down, even if just temporarily. Loki has tried to follow his brother’s footsteps and gotten burned alive for it, so instead he gnaws on his suffering just long enough to punish himself before thrusting it away in the hopes that it will stay buried.

These are the conclusions you’ve reached after watching Loki wane, his sharp tongue coming unsheathed less and less as talk moves backwards through time from Zemo to Ultron and on…

Dawn is usually beginning to spill by the time everyone arrives at recollections of New York in 2012. Loki always makes a discreet exit before the sky lightens beyond grey, and no one ever asks after his disappearance—you’ve caught Thor glancing in the direction of Loki’s rooms a few times, but that’s the extent of it.

You can hardly blame them. Thinking about the destruction Loki had rained down on New York still raises the hair on the back of your neck, after all, and you imagine it’s even harder for the people who’d actually fought him to remember the death and chaos. But still, the raw sadness that runs through Loki those nights is laden with something that looks awfully like guilt, and you’ve found yourself lying awake on more than one occasion wondering if he’s left all alone, impaled on a double-edged sword.

These thoughts swarm your mind as you spear another bite with your fork. Suddenly, Loki’s gentle jest from earlier echoes in your head and you extend the utensil across the table without thinking.

Loki blinks at you quizzically before looking down at the fork you’re all but waving in his face. Your voice sounds like it’s coated in rust when you try to speak, so you clear your throat and try again, thankfully with slightly better results.

“Do you want to try some? It’s really good.”

Loki still looks baffled, but nods— _is he really smiling or is that just to keep up appearances? You can’t tell_ —and leans forward, lips parting to delicately take the bite of food you offer on an unsteady hand. He makes a small noise of appreciation and the fluttering in your stomach settles for a moment before kicking up into a storm when his eyes meet yours and he swipes his tongue over his lower lip, clearing away invisible dribbles of sauce.

“Thank you, darling.”

You make a strangled noise that you hope passes as gracious before forcing your lips up into a smile and scooping up another bite in an attempt to regain whatever semblance of normalcy you can. Before you can lift it to your mouth, however, a spoonful of Loki’s soup hovers in front of you.

The warm aroma curling into your nose is mouthwatering, but your brain is far too focused on the glimmer of light over Loki’s face and how nice he looks when he’s not sneering to notice.

“Try it. It’s really good,” he echoes, but you can’t detect any trace of mockery in his voice as he tips the spoon at you.

He can’t seriously expect you to let him feed you, can he? A tiny voice in the back of your head whispers that yes, he can, because you literally just did the exact same thing, and Loki had very docilely eaten from your hand. He’s just acting. Just making it even. Isn’t he?

His hand tilts just a fraction more and you open your mouth, more out of reflex than anything else, but it’s of your own free, hypersensitive will that you move forward and take the spoonful in your mouth.

The soup is delicious, a perfectly balanced concoction of simmered beans and root vegetables. So delicious that when Loki pulls his hand back, you’re unprepared, and your lips purse around the metal, sucking for an instant as though you can prevent him from taking the spoon out of your mouth by suction and sheer subconscious willpower.

Loki’s eyes widen in surprise. You realize what’s happening a second later and release the spoon, sitting back in your chair hastily, but a familiar smirk is already curling over Loki’s face, eyes glinting with devious mirth.

“Note taken,” he tells you as he props his chin on one hand and cocks his head at you. “Room service later, then?” One dark eyebrow quirks suggestively and Loki smooths his tongue over his lips much more slowly than necessary, flicking the wet tip of his tongue over his teeth showily.

You roll your eyes at him and huff, and just like that, you’re able to coax him back into the routine of banter you’ve grown accustomed to as he finishes his soup and you polish off what’s left on your plate. Only this time, there’s something different about your exchange, and you’re not sure you want to name it; the barbs are heatless, thrown without any real malice, and you can’t shake the mental image of how sweet and open Loki’s face was as he fed you.

It’s unnerving, and you’re glad when the waiter comes to clear your plates. Your relief doesn’t last long, though; Loki offers you his arm on the way back to the elevator, and when you take it, your alarm at how natural it feels is enough to make your heart rate spike.

If you weren’t so distressed, you would have giggled at the thought of whoever was monitoring your vitals through the ring trying to make sense of the sudden jump. When the elevator doors open and you step in, Loki drops his arm from yours, and you aren’t sure if the sudden sense of loss that follows is because you miss his touch or because you simply miss the warmth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every single time I write about Loki and food, it turns into a weird, flirty, pseudo-sensual thing and I'm really not sure what that says about me as a person.
> 
> (Also, Natasha definitely deliberately lent Reader some slinky boudoir pieces because she's chaotic like that, and she knows Loki is trying to get the red off his ledger too.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which feelings arise at very inconvenient times, a party is attended, and a battle of pride and perhaps flirting ensues.

_If you weren’t so distressed, you would have giggled at the thought of whoever was monitoring your vitals through the ring trying to make sense of the sudden jump. When the elevator doors open and you step in, Loki drops his arm from yours, and you aren’t sure if the sudden sense of loss that follows is because you miss his touch or because you simply miss the warmth._

The elevator begins its ascent, carrying the two of you and a few other guests, accompanied by soft piano music and the muffled whirring of elevator cables. When a middle-aged man in a blue suit exits the car on the seventh floor, you feel a gentle pressure nudging at the side of your pinky finger.

You ignore it, tucking your arm a tad more tightly to your side as you try to figure out what the aim of Loki’s touch is by peering into the polished mirror-like panels on the elevator walls. He nudges you again, tabbing his finger around yours insistently. You give in and glance up at him—Loki’s face is turned away, everything about his expression and stance radiating boredom.

His fingers graze your hand again, purposefully.

Your wrist tilts as you turn to ask him what he’s doing, and in a flash, Loki intertwines his fingers with yours and turns to hold you captive with a gleaming smile. His palm flattens against yours and you pray that the sudden acceleration of your heart will go unnoticed.

It’s stupid, you tell yourself, that you’re so affected by something so trivial. You’re a sorceress well on her way to becoming a master of the Mystic Arts, not some smitten middle-schooler. This is just an act. Your admiration for Loki is akin to the one you have for Stephen, and nothing more.

Your insistence tastes hollow. You curse mentally as your heart hammers even harder.

Loki’s fingers squeeze yours ever so lightly and you _feel_ his seiðr pressing at you, pulsating gently around your mind. His magical presence feels contained, but barely so, as if he’s holding back his full self behind a thin skin about to rupture.

Telepathy isn’t something Stephen has trained you on beyond the bare foundational bones ( _physical contact helps anchor astral voices, pick something mundane to build your mental defenses around, it’s easy to break minds so don’t mess around_ ), but your experiments with a reluctant Wong had never yielded connections of this intensity, this utter completion. Even with the film-like barrier between Loki and you and your own mental walls, feeling his mind surround yours like this is intimate in a way that makes your every nerve tingle.

Loki’s fingers tighten around yours again and an odd, rhythmic pressure ripples through your mind—he’s knocking, you realize with a shock, asking you to lower your mental defenses and meet his mind. Behind the barriers, his seiðr sizzles and glitters tantalizingly like gems through a kaleidoscope, pulsing and shifting with every breath.

Quickly, you wrap your fingers more tightly around Loki’s and dissolve the walls around your mind, although the power teeming behind his own veil is surely enough to shatter your shields a thousand times over.

His seiðr sings in your blood as your minds touch, electricity streaking through your body as the immensity that is Loki’s mind and magic brushes nakedly against the condensation of your existence. The fragrance you’ve come to associate with manifestations of his seiðr sinks into you, wrapping around you like wintry cashmere until all you can smell and taste is crystalline ice wreathed by clean smoke.

He had been holding back nearly all of his presence when he spoke to you earlier, in the hotel room—you realize this very belatedly when he speaks and his words resonate through you, rolling icily through every cell of your body and completely overwhelming you. Panic spikes through you only to be dulled an instant later by the absolute magnitude of Loki’s presence, and you think you feel your legs tremble—you aren’t quite certain because tactile sensation has become akin to empathizing with something happening very far away and seen through several thick panes of wavy, distorted glass.

Loki’s voice is rapid and deafening in your bones, flaring through your flesh and mind like a siren, but you can’t condense his energy into anything coherent; you yourself are reduced to a mere speck in the unfathomable sea of his being, reconciled to bobbing in the battering flow and trying not to drown. His presence grows somehow, a wild crescendo that feels like an explosion inside you, before suddenly, it all ceases and impossibly still silence lurches in Loki’s abrupt absence.

You collapse, burying your face in the crisp white fabric that inexplicably halts your fall. Dull echoes surround you, soundwaves crashing against each other incoherently under the ringing that pervades your skull. The feeling slowly, torturously returns to your limbs, and you almost wish it wouldn’t—the homecoming of a functional nervous system is accompanied by a searing sting that feels as though every stitch holding your being together is being ripped apart and redone.

The agony fades, gradually, and you realize that the metallic tang in your mouth is blood; you’ve bitten through the delicate skin of your cheek, leaving a raw, torn gash where a flap of flesh dangles against your teeth limply. Cold sweat prickles the nape of your neck as the ringing in your ears dwindles and you swallow through the painful dryness in your throat.

You blink and the anonymous white fabric filling your field of vision sharpens into a starched dress shirt, taut where a hot iron has pressed it crisp, although a tiny, uneven crease stabs out from the corner of the armhole. There is a hand laid flat next to said crease, fingers lax. You suppose it’s your hand, although it’s numb (which, you ponder, is arguably better than the hellfire currently lingering in your chest). The even, calming pressure on your back resolves into the shape of a hand stroking carefully up and down your spine.

Quiet piano replaces the infernal ringing, along with a soft rush of speech that sounds oddly familiar; a few more seconds of careful listening clarifies Loki’s voice into sweet, flowery expressions of sentiment and what sounds like casual planning for the next day’s agenda. The pauses and intonation of his speech suggest that he’s speaking to someone, but you only hear his voice. A spurt of indignance wracks your chest: _you’re_ supposed to be his wife, after all. He’s being an ass and endangering the mission, flirting shamelessly like this in front of you!

Quite suddenly, the hand on his chest twitches and you realize with a shock that it is indeed _your_ hand.

A series of observations hits you in quick bursts: not only is your hand laid out over Loki’s breast like the cover model of a cheap romance novella, but your face is mere inches from his chest. The hand on your back is his, and has transitioned from soothing to support, fingers splayed securely over the small of your back. Your other hand is still entwined with Loki’s, and there’s a thrum where your skin touches his that both excites and terrifies you. None of the other guests in the elevator seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Loki is still spouting nonsense when you wiggle the hand still in his grip; he looks down at you with a wild expression in his eyes, and a ghost of his mental voice floats into your head as if from far, far away. Your brow wrinkles in confusion as you stare up at Loki; the words coming from his lips don’t match the mantra seeping out from behind his formidable mental barricades.

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

The frantic regret and panic flooding Loki’s mental voice grounds you completely, and you snap back into functioning reality.

He must have accidentally overpowered you when establishing the mental connection; you’d fainted under duress, and Loki had freaked out. Was currently freaking out. Okay. You could deal with this, you just had to stay calm. Use logic. It would be fine.

Your recently-calmed heart leaps into your throat, blunt, pungent fear thickening your breath as you tentatively extend a tiny tendril of your mental energy towards Loki.

As you approach him, even with the grounding contact between your palm and his chest dulled by the fabric of his shirt, Loki’s energy is like a tidal wave under the full moon. Dread smothers you as the faint scent of ice and smoke grows thicker. Your mental thread wavers and your fingers tighten over Loki’s chest. You force yourself to breathe deep and flatten your fingers out again.

You reach out timidly, teeth gritting as you touch the very tip of your mind to the edge of Loki’s defenses.

_Loki._

There’s no response in your mind, but Loki’s physical voice continues speaking—now, you’re certain that either something is very wrong with your brain or Loki has gone stark raving mad, because he’s still talking to no one.

“—yes, of course we will, sweetheart. Tomorrow, maybe.”

_Loki, stop ignoring me._

Something shifts almost imperceptibly in the shimmering, solid walls encircling Loki’s mind and you tense, ready to pull your little tendril back. A miniscule wisp of Loki’s energy—if this were yours, it’d be no more than a mental whisper—brushes against you, but when you hear his mental voice, it’s just as clear as your own.

_I wasn’t ignoring you. I had to cast an illusion to make sure no one saw you lolling about like a corpse. We’ve just had a very pleasant conversation about how wonderful you find me and our plans to go to the beach tomorrow._

Loki sounds perfectly unruffled and you would have believed the irritation injected into his words if you hadn’t also heard his frantic, repeated apology seconds earlier. You’re tempted to call him out on it, but you also feel as though your mind and body have been scraped raw, thrown into a blender, and then sloppily reformed, so you let it drop.

_So nobody noti—_

You break off, nostrils flaring as it suddenly hits you that although you can sense Loki’s magical presence, it’s as though your connection has been sterilized. Everything is perfectly clear, but there’s no frosty scent, no phantom smoke and ice on your tongue, none of the signatures that have always accompanied Loki’s mental presence.

_Why can’t I feel you?_ you demand.

_What are you talking about? You’re touching me right now._

Loki’s voice is taut, his scorn just as sleek as always. You dig your fingers into his chest, wondering if you could get away with pinching him.

_You know what I mean, Loki. Why do you feel so…clinical?_

_I have no idea what you’re talking about. Do you really miss your master so much you’re projecting him onto me?_

_Stephen’s not my_ master _, and you know damn well what I’m talking about. Mental connections and magic come with smells, flavors, sensations. It wouldn’t matter how desensitized my mind is, your magic is strong enough that even non magic users can sense_ something _from it. What are you doing that I can’t smell or taste you?_

Loki snorts in your mind and the sound only brings a fresh spike of fear that something is terribly, irrevocably wrong with you, because it’s unaccompanied by the smoky, burnt toffee sweetness that his sardonic mirth is so often imbued with in this form.

_So demanding. You do remember that you aren’t really my wife, don’t you? Generally I would expect a bit more intimacy than one dinner before letting someone_ taste _me._

You do pinch him for that one, reveling despite your fatigue at the slight flare of Loki’s nostrils. Unfortunately, you don’t have anything better than “shut up” to offer as a retort, so Loki gets to smirk in unmarred exultation while the elevator finishes its ascent.

His arms remain wrapped around you, one hand splayed comfortably over the small of your back while the other comes up to rest on your hip. You let him hold you until the elevator doors open with a ding; it’s all for appearances, after all, and Loki doesn’t have to know that there’s something comforting about the way his touch envelops you, or just how much you like the faint undertone of his scent that lingers under the ritzy cologne he’s wearing.

You only like it because it’s a sign, however dim, that your magic isn’t broken. At least, that’s what you tell yourself when Loki breaks away and walks into the penthouse, and something like sadness seeps into your system.

 

Sultry jazz winds softly through the clink of glasses and conversation as you follow Loki into the dimly lit suite of rooms. The air is a muddy, stifling mélange of champagne, expensive perfumes, and rough cigarette smoke; thankfully, the smell lessens as you continue moving in search of the couple who invited you, although it’s still present enough to make you take shallow breaths.

Much to your relief, Loki finds Daphne and Art before long, and far away enough from where most of the smoking guests have apparently chosen to gather—it wouldn’t do to cough up your dinner on your host’s carpet, after all.

As you approach, you slow reluctantly; the two women are caught in what appears to be an intense conversation bordering on argument. Daphne’s eyes are flashing as she speaks, her hands jerking through the air in short, tight motions, and Art’s arms are crossed over her body, her jaw clenched and eyebrows furrowed over hard eyes. All in all, nothing about this situation suggests that you want to interrupt, but before you can nab him, Loki strides forward with a pleased smile and a cheeky little wave.

They break apart immediately and offer you both winning, inviting smiles, although there’s a certain stiffness behind their earnest greetings.

“So glad you could make it!” Daphne exclaims as she brushes kisses to both of Loki’s cheeks and does the same to you. Her fingers are thin but almost alarmingly hot on your bare arms, and you find yourself leaning away from her pink-glossed lips as they leave the air just above your cheeks.

“Of course,” Loki responds when a glance at your struggling smile makes it evident that you won’t, “thank you for the invitation. Wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the party without it.”

Daphne’s giggle doesn’t soften Art’s expression, but her hand, laid gently over Art’s arm, does. “You got here at a good time. They just opened up the cocktails,” she says with a sigh, pushing herself up from where she leans against the counter. Daphne all but beams when Art continues, “Here, I’ll introduce you to our friend who’s hosting. I think you’ll get along.”

You and Loki follow Art as she weaves through the crowd, pausing occasionally to nudge someone’s cocktail-wielding elbow aside or nod in greeting to someone as you pass. You had pulled up your mental barriers again once Loki had let go of you and secured them around the perimeter of your mind, and they act now as thick glass walls around you, shielding you from the buzz of the crowd and energies mingling high around you.

Art leads you to what is presumably a seat at the wet bar, although it’s hard to tell with the throng of people clamoring around it, and with a quick look at you and Loki to make sure you stay put, goes to tap one of the eager party guests on the shoulder. The man pulls away reluctantly as Art leans in to whisper something in his ear, and his eyes flicker over you and Loki appraisingly.

You smile as convincingly as you can, although you can feel your knees trembling from whatever happened earlier in the elevator, and Loki mirrors you, although his smile is much more polished than your own. He seems eerily comfortable here, amongst all this finery and façade, until you remind yourself that Loki is, after all, a prince.

The man’s lips tighten into half a smile before he tilts away and vanishes into the crowd, leaving a gap in the ring of people. Before you can do more than register the man’s abrupt exit, Art seizes you and Loki by the arm and drags you forward, surging through the gap as if over a finish line.

Your fingers dig into Loki’s arm on reflex when the flurry of lights and glittering fabric parts around you and you finally catch sight of the center of the circle’s attention.

Her hair is strawberry blond rather than inky and falls in artfully disheveled waves around flawless skin and soaring cheekbones—there hadn’t been pictures of her with this particular hair color, but there’s no mistaking the signature poised glint in her light eyes. Ellaria Blake’s ruby-painted lips open wide in a rich laugh as one of the guests surrounding her makes a joke, and by the time her brilliant white teeth are hidden again, the break in the circle behind you and Loki has filled seamlessly with more people trying to enter the little spotlight that Ellaria both basks in and exudes.

Loki exhales sharply and flexes the muscle under your fingers until you let go hastily, but his charming smile never slips. Art slips forward and you expect her to tap Ellaria on the shoulder to get her attention, but her fingers glide down the side of her arm instead in a surprising gesture that borders on reverent.

Ellaria turns and Art motions towards the two of you; aqua eyes pin you suddenly, and your mouth is suddenly drier than you ever remember it being. A tiny voice in the back of your brain screams that you ought to be on high alert, not stunned by the rather stupid realization that a supermodel is very, very pretty, but the thought is tinny and far away. Red lips curve into a welcoming smile as Ellaria’s voice sounds sweetly:

“Ooh, have you brought some new friends, Artemis?”

Art’s glare is enough to stop you from repeating her full name aloud, so you adjust your surprise and introduce your alias, looking to Loki expectantly afterwards.

Your jaw all but hits the floor when he steps forward, takes Ellaria’s hand in his, and presses the back of it gently to his lips as he introduces himself as “Loïc Hollins, pleasure to meet you”. A spike of something hot and unpleasant surges to your chest, but you swallow past the discomfort and sudden thudding in your ears to smile as Ellaria purrs her own name in exchange.

Her fingertips trail delicately along Loki’s hand as hers slips from his grasp, and you force yourself not to stare at the smooth, nearly ethereal limb. _They’d look good together_ , you think before disgust and shock shoves the thought out of your mind.

Her voice crashes through your fixated stupor like a wave breaking on a sandbar, and you blink rapidly before managing a very eloquent, “What?”

Embarrassment prickles on your cheeks and pools in your chest as Loki’s foot nudges yours none too gently and Art stares at you as though you’ve just blurted out that you have another head. Ellaria, however, just tilts her head at you and giggles as though you’ve just delivered the wittiest joke she’s ever heard in her entire life, and reaches out to touch your hand. Or so you think.

Instead, her hand slides to your cheek, and you nearly whimper when her skin makes contact with yours; Ellaria’s fingertips are cold and slightly wet from the condensation on her glass, but her palm is a stretch of silky heat against your cheek. It’s almost unbearable in the semi-stifling air, especially with the sweat and crush of the crowd around you, but something about the sensation burns in a glorious way.

It’s akin to the sear of sun-roasting stone under bare feet, you think, and as soon as the simile floats off the gears in your mind, Ellaria’s skin lifts off yours and she tucks a strand of hair neatly behind your ear. Her hand, wrist orbited by a thin, glittering bangle of diamonds and silver, returns to her lap like a zephyr and you discover that your heart is pounding.

She smiles, and the flash of her teeth sparks another swell of stinging, ecstatic frenzy in you.

“I said that your necklace is absolutely gorgeous.”

Loki’s expression doesn’t change, but the way his hand suddenly manifests around your waist suggests that Ellaria is paraphrasing her earlier comment, and a note of alert zings through you.

“Thank you,” the words feel clunky as they tumble off your tongue, but you try to coax your voice into rolling waves like Loki’s, “it was a gift.”

“Ohhh,” Ellaria nods knowingly, drawing out the word as her strawberry blond hair bobs with the motion of her head. Her lipstick leaves a neat mark on the rim of her glass when she takes a sip, pale throat convulsing with her swallow. There’s something strange about the eagerness in her voice when her gaze slides to Loki and she says with a smile, “Good taste.”

The odd twist gleaming over her words fades when she swirls her drink and tips it back. Art takes the empty glass that Ellaria hands off without so much as a glance, and somehow, even before ruby-red lips part again, you know your audience with Ellaria Blake is over.

“Pleasure meeting you. I hope you enjoy the party—and Mr. Hollins, angel, do take care of your lovely wife.”

Glasses clink around you as your feet follow Art and Loki to a slightly less crowded area; your ears feel numb and you can only hope that your smile is still intact. Loki’s hand moves from your waist to your shoulder, steadying you, but barely; the pressure is no more than dead weight, and without the familiar smell and sensation accompanying it, Loki’s touch may as well be a dead log for all the support it gives.

You feel yourself wobble under the added pressure of Daphne’s smile as she approaches. You can only hope that Loki knows what he’s doing as he greets her while snagging a glass of… _something_ from a passing waiter and passing it off smoothly to you. Your fingertips brush his and a tiny zap of static jolts from his skin to yours as you take the glass—surprise lances through you and the pale gold liquid lurches dangerously in your grasp, but it’s not the electric shock that has you so off-kilter.

It was just for an instant, but you swear that when Loki’s hand touched yours, the zapping sensation had been accompanied by a burst, as potent as a swift strike to the skull, of the scent of his seiðr. You tilt your wine below your nose, disguising your sniff as appreciation of the bouquet as you search for more of the crisp, crystalline fragrance.

Your search is fruitless, but a spark of determined hope ignites in your chest all the same. There was a way to get your magic sense back, even if it meant wringing aid out of Loki. A measured sip of the white wine brings only the dry, fermented singe of grape and wood to your senses, but you persist, wrapping an arm low around Loki and curling your body into his in a way that you never would have dared if not for your quest.

His shock is evident in the invisible stiffness that meets your touch, but it lasts only a second before one long-fingered hand envelops your hip, keeping you snugly tucked into the contour of muscle and frame. Daphne’s smile grows at the sight of your very public, unfettered affection, but your determination keeps the resulting wave of mortification at bay—none of this means anything, anyway, and Loki can’t risk blowing both your covers by rebuking you as harshly as you’re sure he wants to.

Daphne’s fingers entwine with her wife’s, and you can feel the two edges of her question when she asks, “How did you like Ellaria?”

You feel Loki’s chest expand in preparation for a response, so you decide to beat him to it—he’s not the only one who can play this game, after all. You’d trained too; maybe Stephen’s surgical high society cynicism wasn’t quite the same as growing up in throngs of nobility with the responsibilities of a kingdom looming over your shoulders, but how far apart could the two really be?

“She’s such a gem! So glad to have met her, tonight has been _so_ fun,” you gush, lifting your shoulders in a tiny swoop to emphasize your answer. Daphne beams, but Art swills her drink in a way that drains your confidence as though the slide of Art’s eyes from Daphne’s face to her glass has sliced through your stomach. A sudden pang of doubt strikes your throat, so you turn your eyes up to Loki in a reluctant but desperate plea for aid.

He smiles fondly down at you, and even to you, it looks merely like an affectionate expression of agreement, but you know better. Still, it’s hard not to fall completely into the narrative his silver voice weaves into the air.

“Well, of course, she did seem quite taken with you, darling.” Celadon eyes flicker to Art and Daphne before the softest of smirks touches Loki’s lips. A hint of smoky ice wafts over your senses and your breath catches. “Hard not to be…” His thumb traces idly over your hip, and you wonder if his touch will brand you through the thin fabric of Natasha’s dress. “I must say, though, this is a splendid party. I confess, I’m not usually one for such things, but such a gracious host makes them enjoyable even for me.”

A laugh pours out from his throat and a swell of awe crashes over you; Loki’s every breath is perfectly timed, perfectly delivered. His intonation intoxicates and his small, fluid motions flow with his words, coaxing his audience into laughing along and allowing themselves to get swept up in the version of time he paints. It’s like watching a legend unfold itself before your very eyes—that’s exactly what this is, you realize as Art finally cracks and relinquishes her silent objection.

Your buried admiration for Loki resurfaces, and you have to remind yourself that he’s still the same arrogant alien who’s threatened to defenestrate you over a dispute on the best medium for drawing sigils. No matter how awe-inducing his performance is, you can’t afford to let yourself be fooled by it. Once this mission is over, it’ll all go back to how it was before; parries and tentative almost-truces before the smallest of things ignites another torrent.

You aren’t even friends, and you certainly aren’t flirting. That, you tell yourself sternly, is the most dangerous lie of all.

“Glad to hear it!” Daphne’s hands are agonizingly hot, without any of the pleasurable sear present in Ellaria’s touch, when she clasps your shoulder briefly; if Loki is discomfited by it as well, he doesn’t show it.

The music changes, melting into a waltz made spicy with syncopation and a robust bassline. Art shares a long, heavy look with Daphne before she pinches the conversation shut with a remark on how this was played at their wedding and the couple disappears into the crowd, presumably heading towards the clearing that serves as a dancefloor.

You drift after Loki, trying to find some sort of anchor to root your magic in as a reference point while also keeping out all the bustle and ferment clustering around you. He manages to find a somewhat secluded corner, too well-lit for the closeness you’d observed fleetingly on the way here but sheltered from the naked eyes of the party by a flamboyant potted fern.

When he speaks, his voice is light and he looks to the crowd, and so it takes a moment for you to realize that his words are meant for you.

“Have you found a magic user yet?”

Your brow furrows. Loki slowly slides an arm around your shoulder and the action itself shocks you far less than how accustomed you are to his touch. Still looking out over the party as if surveying some fantastic landscape, Loki tilts his head close to yours and whispers,

“Relax. Breathe slowly, and _feel_ what’s around you.”

You purse your lips, ready to snap back at him that you _can’t_ feel anything, and that’s exactly the problem, but just before you do, Loki’s eyes flash to yours and you find yourself silenced by the sheer magnitude behind his pretty seaglass irises.

Your mouth shuts and you gaze over the throng of people without seeing them, casting out a net of magical energy as you’ve done a thousand times before. Nothing pulls against your passive magical presence; there is no friction against your extended mind, no tingling otherness responding to the icy, phantom flow in your veins. You frown and close your eyes, leaning (almost instinctively at this point) into Loki’s chest to cover the look of concentration on your features as you force yourself to broaden your focus and let the mundane noise fall away.

Nothing.

Your eyes snap open and you scowl furiously as you jerk your gaze up into Loki’s face. “I don’t feel any—”

And then you taste it.

Molasses, dark and syrupy, dripping from the bassline rocking gently in the air. It saturates your senses the longer you listen, filling your nose, mouth, and mind with its addictive richness as the notes plod along in swung time to the waltz.

Your incredulity must be evident, because Loki only manages to look at you for a few seconds before chuckling, and you can’t even really be mad at him, because the sound carries a strand of buttery toffee with it, mingling with the bassist’s infused music.

“The bassist,” you say, although it comes out as more of a question; you want confirmation that this isn’t just your mind conjuring up something in your desperation. The need for reassurance is so strong that you can nearly taste your desperation when Loki pulls a critical face, lips pursing. His teeth glint as he leans in and whispers,

“Yes and no. The bassist is channeling magic, yes, but he isn’t the source.”

He rocks you from side to side and you fall in step with him, your feet moving to the music as the two of you fill out your own little square in the corner.

_Then who?_ you ask, not wanting to raise your voice above the honeyed waltz and low chatter.

The creases in Loki’s brow deepen and he doesn’t answer for a moment. His gaze narrows before it focuses on some point past your shoulder and you suspect he’s holding back some scathing comment about your incapability. His silence and the distinct avoidance of eye contact certainly seems to indicate displeasure, in any case.

When Loki does finally reply, it catches you off guard.

_They’re cloaked._

His face smooths into a pleasant smiling mask, but there’s a hardness in his eyes that keeps the smile from reaching them. His mental voice coils with the barest hint of frustration.

_Someone is hiding here. This is old power, from someone born to magic._

His eyes hold yours mercilessly and you understand the unspoken half of his comment perfectly.

_Real_ magic is what Loki means, the kind that runs in his veins and has always flowed in duet with his consciousness, able to be directed at will, not the unwieldy, channel-dependent sort that you had learned under Stephen’s tutelage. He barely thinks of what you do as magic, anyways—memories of debates with Loki over the properties of seiðr versus your sling ring-channeled energy flood your mind and you drop your gaze, unable to bear the silent judgement and rejection you know you’ll find written over Loki’s face.

The waltz and its mysterious magic-imbued bassline ends in a sonorous, rippling blend of piano and strings. This time, you make sure you’re the first to release Loki; it’s too easy to forget that this is all a façade, and that feels too dangerous to risk.

The ring that Tony crafted for you suddenly feels much more prominent on your finger, and you allow yourself a few nervous strokes of your thumb over the carved edge.

Loki eyes you shrewdly from the side—you can feel the weight of his calculating gaze on you—but doesn’t attempt to breach the silence. A tiny voice in the back of your brain suggests stupidly that perhaps his antipathy has thawed, maybe even distilled into some sort of vague affection or apathy, but you quash it firmly. Loki is just gifted at performance, that’s all—there’s no way he could have forgotten the contempt that fueled his rejections of your attempts at reconciliation.

You certainly hadn’t.

 

The rest of the party passes without extraordinary event; you share a handful of dances with Loki, circling the room in an intimate embrace to disguise the fact that both of you are scanning the room’s energy for a hint as to the source of the magic continuing to use the bassist and his instrument as a vessel.

At one point, you think you spot Daphne and Art dancing, but the dim light and heady, smoky mélange in the air makes you too dizzy to track them. Ellaria’s little circle by the bar remains a constant fixture as people exchange their spots in the swarm around her seat.

Finally, when you realize that the majority of guests have trickled out to their own rooms for the night, you nudge Loki’s hand and say, suddenly much more aware of the ache in the arches of your feet, “It’s getting late, sweetheart.”

He cocks his head at you, and there’s something unreadable in his eyes. For a moment, Loki is just as foreign to you as he was the first day you met, dark, regal head haloed by the warm light in the suite.

A smile spreads across his face, cracking open the shadowy contours like a sliver of ice through stone.

“Eager for bed, are we?”

Your eyes narrow, but Ellaria is sparkling far too brightly in the corner for you to openly fume at Loki’s mischief. _Fine_. Two could play at this game—the wine you had thought long digested seems to alight again in your blood, urging you on with a fire that can’t be all façade.

Sly, stupidly clever Loki. How many people before, you wonder, had ever dared to turn the tables of his own game on him? It seemed to you that the list could use one more name.

Your determination runs like quicksilver through your arms, sizzling giddily as you reach up to lace your fingers together behind Loki’s neck. His skin is refreshingly cool against the matte tackiness the crowded room and body heat has lent your own limbs, but as you stretch up and lean in until your cheeks brush his, the soft puff of Loki’s breath against your face is warm.

“ _Exceedingly_ ,” you whisper into his ear, much closer than strictly necessary. Loki is so very solid and broad under your hands, and it’s very tempting to keep yourself pulled flush against his body; somehow, he’s managed to avoid the level of stickiness and heat built up on your body, leaving contact with him wonderfully refreshing. “Don’t forget, we have things to do tomorrow. This little human doesn’t have _real_ magic to push through exhaustion.”

You pull back, holding Loki’s gaze steady. In this light, the pale rings of his irises gleam almost grey, but their signature glacial acuity is present as always.

“I believe the beach was mentioned, husband dearest,” you tell him at a normal speaking volume. “I need all the rest I can get if we’re going to properly frolic in the waves tomorrow.”

Loki’s eyelids flutter as he holds back an eyeroll and the corner of his mouth twitches. “Very well then.”

A cool, wide hand suddenly presses against the back of your knees and sweeps you up off the ground—you yelp before you can stop yourself as your feet leave the floor, dangling over Loki’s arm as though you are some doll.

“I’ll spare you the arduous walk then,” he tells you in a voice dripping chivalry, but the cunning glitter in his eyes betrays his smugness. You cling to his neck despite yourself, suddenly sober and cursing your audacity as you realize just how thin the fabric of Natasha’s dress is, and how lovely Loki’s hands feel curling against your thigh. Loki’s voice lowers and you hear his next words more in your mind than through your ears, lacquered with his particular brand of self-assured danger:

“ _And when we get back to the room, I’ll show you some_ real _magic._ ”

Your face is still burning, both from Loki’s comment and the buttery aftertaste of his self-satisfaction, when he pauses in striding out with you in his arms to nod graciously at Ellaria, who’s still perched on her stool and sipping.

“Lovely party,” Loki says easily with a smile. “And wonderful to meet you. We’ll be at the beach tomorrow, any chance of seeing you there?”

Ellaria’s smile is indolent and rich in a lazy, complacent way that Loki always shears off his own such grins. The plump red of her painted lips catches the light like a cabochon as she replies, “I’m afraid not, I’ve booked a riding session with a friend.”

Her eyes slide to you, still balanced in Loki’s arms like a disheveled bride. “Enjoy your beach day—take care not to get sunburnt. You won’t know until it’s too late.”

Loki follows up with some smooth politesse before carrying you out to the elevators. You don’t turn to see, but it feels as though Ellaria’s eyes follow you until the _ding_ of the car banishes her gaze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I'm aliiiiivvveeeee_
> 
> Hello, if you're reading this, thank you so much for sticking around! If you're a new reader, welcome! I'm sorry to say that since I'm back for another year at university, updates are unfortunately going to be much slower. Hopefully they'll be longer though! I do have the rest of this fic planned out, and I fully intend to finish it! Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and fingers crossed I'll see you all again sooner rather than later!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki struggles with emotional responsibility, the concept of flirting is flirted with, and (hear me out) the (fake) married couple's hotel room only has one (real) bed.

The synthetic bell announcing your arrival at your floor also ushers in a wave of fresh fatigue; your feet ache anew as the elevator doors slide open, despite the fact that you’re still cradled bridal-style in Loki’s arms. As he turns sideways to sidle out of the car and into the hall, you venture quietly, unsure of whether or not you should be protesting,

“You know, you can put me down now. I can walk back to the room myself.”

Loki’s eyes glint with a mischievous edge you know all too well. “I couldn’t force such a thing upon my beloved wife.”

He pauses, lips parted slightly as he stares you down for effect. The back of your neck prickles even before he finishes saying gleefully, “And don’t forget, it’s our _honeymoon_. Walking isn’t a particularly large part of my plan for you, my love.”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Lo—”

_Hush._

Loki’s mental presence tumbles over you at the same time he adjusts you in his arms so that your legs are hitched up around his body, his forehead pressing against yours. You squeak at the sudden swing and immediately want to die at the tiny, responding quirk of his lips before your pounding heart reminds you that there are far more pressing reasons to be concerned.

_Stay absolutely still._

Loki’s mental voice is accompanied by a tingling feeling down your spine and over your skin as the scent of his seiðr intensifies. You obey your stunned speechlessness, if not his order, and remain as still as you can, hardly daring breathe more than a few shallow, measured inhales and equally hesitant exhales.

His voice simmers with caramel amusement next as Loki begins walking again, carrying you effortlessly to the door of your room and swiping it open with only a minor adjustment of his cargo.

_You really should consider taking on a better master for this sort of thing. Your sorcerer obviously hasn’t trained you to remember the story that keeps you alive. You’re lucky I’ve already taken care of the spying ears in our room._

The door swings shut behind the two of you, but Loki doesn’t let you down immediately. Instead, he turns to press you against the door and continues to hold you up, although he does pull back enough that your foreheads no longer touch. It’s far enough to see very clearly the spark of entertainment in his eyes, but just close enough that your heart still refuses to slow.

Swallowing past the riot in your chest, you attempt to snap back, _I wasn’t going to say your actual name. I knew what I was doing, you’re the one that made it weird._

Loki raises one eyebrow, placid satisfaction settling over the laughter on his face. _Of course you weren’t. And I’m sure you were thinking so loudly on purpose, too._

Your face burns, flame searing your cheeks to match the spots of heat on your legs where Loki’s hands cup your limbs and keep you from falling. His gaze becomes too much to hold, so you purse your lips and surrender, shifting your own eyes to the neutral land of his shoulder.

_What did you do, anyway? I felt it._

Loki’s smile freezes. His reply is curt, much more like the Loki you’ve had the questionable pleasure of dealing with for the two months preceding this sudden performance as a doting husband, and when he sets you down abruptly, he doesn’t pause to steady you when you wobble ever so slightly after his departing touch—not that you’d particularly _expected_ him to, but the new rejection stings after a day of dulling the familiar rawness.

_I created an illusion and shifted the space around us to make sure nothing came of your mistake._

He turns and strides to the bathroom without a single glance backwards. You stare after him, equal amounts baffled, resentful, and annoyed. The door closes behind him firmly and you hear the sink start running.

After a few more seconds of blinking at the closed door to the sound of running water, your feelings overflow, blurring in a muddle somewhere in your chest and you scowl at the sound.

“You would make a terrible teacher, anyway,” you mutter under your breath as you stalk over to your bag. Your conflict brews in your head as you violently rummage through and pull out sleepwear and a makeup wipe.

The first swipe of the wet cloth over your face brings away a palm-sized smear of eyeliner and the other components of the smoky eye you’d worn for the night, as well as some of your frustration. By the time Loki exits the bathroom, your face and feelings are bare, and you’re able to sidle silently past him to go shower and throw away the evidence.

A hot shower lets you growl what remains of your residual frustration into the steam, so it’s with only a knotted thread of apprehension that you tiptoe back out in pajamas and approach the bed.

The knot in your stomach grows as you look over the king-sized bed…and its current inhabitant. Loki appears to be asleep, but even so, you hold your breath as you peer at him.

You’d known this was coming, but now that you were actually faced with the prospect of sharing a bed with Loki, it seemed impossibly daunting.

Your breath hitches in your throat as Loki makes a small noise in his throat and shifts slightly under the covers. One pale, muscular arm flops beside his dark hair, curving gently around his head and bending to accommodate the headboard, and a sudden strike of panic shoots through you.

Is he wearing a shirt—or clothes at all? His arm is bare as far as you can see… You crane your neck and creep closer, but the blankets fall and drape around him in a way that perfectly obscures your vision past his upper arm.

Your eyes dart to Loki’s face as you lean over him and wonder for a moment if you should just sleep on the armchair instead. With his eyes closed (and mouth shut), the regal, finely carved contours of Loki’s face resemble some Renaissance statue. The gentle rise and fall of his breathing and the pearlescent peace of sleep take away the edge from his features; just like earlier on the Quinjet, Loki’s beauty suddenly strikes you in a way that’s too poignant to be expressed or understood.

“You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” you whisper without any heat, “you arrogant asshole.”

Immediately after the words leave your lips, your eyes bug out. You had _not_ drunk enough to justify letting something like that slip out—oh God, you were lucky Loki slept so deeply. You could only hope that you’d spoken softly enough that the microphone in your ring hadn’t picked it up—if _anyone_ had heard you, you’d never live it down.

Cowed by your own burst of random boldness (was that even the right term?), you creep around the bed and carefully lay down as far away as you could from Loki without falling off. Luckily, there was enough room that you could avoid physical contact with him entirely, but not enough to completely escape the slight warmth his limbs leach under the covers. It reminds you both of how he’d held you so closely today and of Ellaria’s hand against your cheek at the party. The parallel is unsettling, but you’re too tired to think it through.

Even with your fatigue tugging at your eyelids, it takes a while to fall asleep, mind racing as it was with thoughts of Loki and theories about Ellaria, Daphne, and Art, but sleep does claim you, the exhaustion of your body overwhelming the bustle of your mind.

When your breathing evens and the stiffness of your muscles relaxes into slumber, Loki’s lips curve up into a tiny smile and his light eyes drift open. He stares at the darkened ceiling for a moment, smile still touching his lips, before he turns and looks at your sleeping face for a moment. He drinks in the sight before silently sitting up and padding over to the armchair you’d considered migrating your sleep to earlier.

One puff, fragrant with smoke and ice, gives Loki a blanket to cover himself with as he curls up in the chair and settles his head on an armrest. He falls asleep with your words thrumming like hummingbirds’ wings in his ears, and knows that he’ll wake before you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello!!
> 
> I'm back :')   
> It's been a crazy few months. There's a lot I'd like to say, but I'm just going to limit myself to hoping that everyone reading this is in a comfortable, safe place, taking care of themselves. There's a lot of uncertainty and fear in the world now, but I'm trying really hard not to succumb to despair. Sending good vibes, comfort, and support to you all, wherever you may be. Take care, everyone, and I'll see you with the next chapter soon. <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki's carefully crafted plan to win the reader's heart advance in a surprisingly smooth fashion, Thor is uncomfortable with PDA, and the plot thickens (in more ways than one).

It’s so hot. So unbearably, euphorically hot that you think every inch of your skin is blistering, but layered in the pain is a pleasure so intense it feels as though the flaying of your body is introducing ecstasy to your soul.

Sweat sticks your skin to the sheets as you pant and throw your head back, reaching down between your legs to grasp whatever is at the center of the sublime waves battering you mercilessly; your fingers tangle in silky hair and tug as sharp kisses scatter over your inner thighs.

The world is a blur of sensation centered on the wet, pulsating electricity in your core; a wail keens through your ears, cleaving the smeary landscape of pleasure for a moment, and shock hits your spine like a splash of icy water as you realize its source is your own throat. The moan deepens into a purr as the attentions of your partner intensify; the lightning in the pit of your stomach coils tighter and winds itself more with every passing second.

White rims your vision as you draw in harsh breaths; you jerk your eyes down as your fingers close on roots and yank of their own accord. Glinting celadon set in a marble complexion meets your heaving stare, and it’s with a howl of pleasure that the wave of euphoria overtakes you, crashing down like with sweet, icy relief as the name of your benefactor tumbles from your lips.

“ _Loki—!_ ”

You jolt awake, sweat coating your skin. As your heartrate slows and the disorientation of your sudden awakening fades, you clasp a hand to your chest and force yourself to suck in air.

It was just a dream.

The stress must have gotten to you. You’d fallen asleep thinking of Ellaria and Loki and their similarities, after all, and Loki’s jokes about you in his bed had probably just made your subconscious overly active.

_Those eyes, sparkling with satisfaction and the promise of more, capture your own. Mine. The word echoes in your head as lips press themselves against your skin, claiming you even as their owner surrenders to your own touch. Mine._

Just a dream.

Your jaw feels oddly sore, as if you’ve just yelled beyond its range, but it only takes an instant to discover why.

“What do you want?” Loki demands, leaning out partway from the bathroom door.

He is very shirtless, and the smooth bevels of muscle over his chest, defined more sharply by the linearity of his clavicle, nearly stop your heart twice, first from shock and again from horror that the sight has such an effect on you. It takes too long for you to realize that the shower is running.

At your wide-eyed silence, Loki adds irritably, “If you can’t remember, ask me later, then.”

He disappears behind the closed door again, but you continue to gape, still trying to fully awaken and separate events of your dream from reality.

A tiny whimper escapes you as you force yourself to unclench your fingers from where they grip the sheets in a chokehold.

“It’s because I’m nervous,” you mutter to yourself as you slowly get out of bed, trying to sound convincing. “It was just a stress dream.”

Somehow, it doesn’t make you feel any better.

You take advantage of Loki’s shower to change and sift through your theories on the connection between Ellaria and the drug deals you’re here to investigate. By the time Loki emerges (fully dressed, thankfully) from the bathroom, you’ve run through a plethora of ideas, none of which seem particularly plausible.

He doesn’t pay you any particular attention as you slowly ease out of bed and hurry to the bathroom, trying to forget how exactly your sleeping mind had insisted his face looked framed by your thighs. A splash of water as cold as you can get the tap to produce helps clear your mind somewhat before you go through the rest of your morning hygiene routine and exchange your underwear for a swimsuit before donning an outfit that is (fortunately) much more conservative than Natasha’s dress, but you still can’t shake a fervent mental plea that Loki will tone down his performance for the day and perhaps have mercy on your frazzled, confused nerves.

When you exit the bathroom, Loki is sitting on the edge of the bed, seemingly speaking to the air:

“Yes, I told you, she’s fine, can we _please_ keep this conversation on topic?”

The sharpness of his tone is familiar, but wrenches strangely in your stomach all the same; you can’t tell if you’re relieved that Loki seems to be back to his usual caustic, dismissive self, or longing for the terribly convincing act of adoration that had obviously prompted your dream.

You cross the room; as you pass Loki’s side, the portal he’d been speaking into is revealed, as well as the person on the other side of it. Your face lights up with a grin as you exclaim with a wave,

“Thor! You’re on monitor duty today?”

He chuckles before responding, “Just until sundown, then I’m switching with Natasha.” Thor’s eyes flicker to Loki for a moment before returning to you. “I trust my brother has been treating you well? Minding his tongue?”

His words are kind and not suggestive whatsoever, but you still tense, heart leaping into your throat for a moment before you manage to unclench your smile and say lightly, “He’s been on his best behavior, no stabbing—yet.”

You hear Loki snort in exasperation from behind you, but before you turn to look, something in Thor’s face makes you pause. He looks almost…sad. There’s a certain downturn to the corners of his eyes, and something heavy weighing around his mouth—

“I have been _exceedingly_ gracious,” Loki cuts in, standing swiftly from the bed. His arms wrap around you before you quite know what’s happening, bringing his body to press lightly against your back. He smells of seiðr and soap, clean and crisp. His chin descends, jaw pressing into the soft junction between your neck and shoulder. “So little faith in me, brother. It’s really quite sad.”

Loki’s cheek presses into your skin and your breath hitches; against your better judgement, you turn your head ever so slightly and slant your gaze down to look at him, and your heart nearly stops.

Loki is looking up at you, eyes softer than you’d ever imagined they could be, his face impossibly unguarded and open. He blinks slowly and it occurs to you that there must be some ulterior motive for this—ah. This is just for Thor; Loki thrives on chaos, after all.

The corner of Loki’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly, as if he knows what you’re thinking.

You should pull away. You really shouldn’t wonder what it would feel like to tip your head further and see if his lips are as soft as they were in your dream. You do anyway.

He’s so close—if you were to tilt your head just a few degrees, you could press your lips to his temple. As it is, you’re essentially cradling his head; your heart pounds so furiously that it’d be a miracle if he couldn’t hear it, and the scent of Loki, both physical and magical, swirls around you headily until you aren’t sure how much he’s leaning on you versus keeping you upright.

“Natasha will check in tonight, debrief her on anything that happens today that wouldn’t have made it through the rings.”

Thor’s speech is suddenly hasty; he makes a quick hand motion to someone out of view, and you catch the slightest glimpse of Wong moving to stand behind him before the portal swivels shut and out of existence.

You’re suddenly glad that Stephen (probably) can’t contact you until you’re back in New York.

You exhale—or at least, you begin to, but it’s significantly more difficult with the weight of Loki’s body draped over you.

“You can let go now,” you say awkwardly.

“Mm.” Loki’s voice vibrates through his lips and buzzes over the skin of your shoulder; you fight the shiver that strokes down your spine. His next move is to inhale deeply; instinct raises your arms to try and push him away, but Loki’s grip tightens almost painfully.

“What are you doing?!” you demand; Loki releases you immediately at the alarm in your voice.

He steps back and crosses his arms over his chest, nose wrinkling as he looks you up and down. “Your smell,” he says finally, almost accusatory in his delivery.

“I’m wearing sunscreen and I showered last night,” you say back automatically, unable to keep the resentment out of your voice.

Loki pauses for a moment, and you fight the urge to shiver as his pale eyes rove over you—not in the calculating, predatory way you expect, but in what you would have called, had you not known Loki as you did, curiosity.

“Your _magic_ smells different,” he says finally, the words laying out of his throat oddly. “Like fire.”

You blink at him.

“Very well.” Loki heaves a theatric sigh and tosses his hair behind one shoulder. “Let’s get this beach excursion over with. I have a feeling it’ll be rather eventful.”

Without another word, he turns and strides to the door—the entire exchange is so sudden and strange that you don’t even register how weird it is to see Loki in shorts and _sandals_ until you’ve followed him halfway down the hall.

 

Once again, Loki is aloof until visibility necessitates his affection, although this particular trip down to the lobby feels frostier than usual; his spine seems straighter and stiffer than before, and the few times he does speak to you to answer your questions about what Thor had to say, his voice is clipped and any eye contact brief.

The unwanted despair that rises up at Loki’s cordial but noticeably cold behavior lodges deep in your chest, sitting heavy and low like a boulder. You hate it, but what you hate more is how much better you feel when the elevator doors open to the lobby and Loki silently takes your hand, fingers intertwining gently with yours.

The resort is a handful of minutes’ walking away from the beachfront, so you and Loki emerge directly from the hotel and set off in the direction of the beach. The sunlight is strong; it glitters off Loki’s hair as though off some dark carved gem while the milky paleness of his smooth skin seems to glow in the light. He almost looks like a life-size statue for sympathetic magic.

You wonder if the intensified sunlight would have any effect on rune casting—by their very nature, runes are linked to natural forces of magic, so it would make sense that stronger sunlight would enhance a spell that drew energy from the sun. A luck spell, perhaps? Those were related to victory and guidance prayers, both of which took cosmic energy from the sun.

You hazard a glance at Loki from the corner of your eye. He doesn’t look displeased, but you also don’t really feel like attempting to breach the distance and asking him—it’s not like he’s ever answered your questions before. At least, not without snarking at you first.

Still, it’s impossible to quash the curiosity building in your brain.

Sigils could use runes within them to direct the spell’s energy, although Stephen didn’t experiment with them the way you wished he would. If you wove the sun rune into a defensive sigil, would the shield draw more power from its inclusion? The rune was associated with wholeness and success, after all.

Your lips twitch as you consider the possibilities.

The sigil itself was a balancing base, designed to focus casting energy. The inclusion of the rune ought to augment its power, but could there be a risk of making the entire thing unstable? What if you balanced the sun rune with its energetic counterpart? Using _isa_ , the ice rune, would probably provide enough balance to stabilize the fire energy and allow the sigil to conduct the power—and it might even help with the defensive power of the shield! Ice’s cosmic energy was solidifying and associated with bondage, which was why you’d woven it into the rope you’d used against Loki the first time you’d met…

“They wouldn’t stabilize each other. The power of each would cancel the other out, and you’d end up with a useless sigil that does nothing but gather energy.”

Loki’s voice is perfectly calm and casual, but that doesn’t stop you from shooting him a startled look. He turns to meet your eyes, his own still unreadable.

“Because the runes would be part of your sigil, you wouldn’t be able to release either,” he tells you matter-of-factly, although the unforgiving rigidity of his lips still make you feel like a child being scolded. “The energy gathered by the sigil would just build and compound its own power until it exploded—or you died from being unable to sustain channeling that much raw energy.”

A gleam of amusement licks at his voice, curling over the edge of his lips and eyes as he adds, “One rune won’t destabilize your sigil if you draw it correctly, although you can reinforce it by using _even_ radial structure instead of your trifold nonsense. It’s only a focus for your casting, anyways.”

You gape at him.

This is by far the most forthcoming he’s _ever_ been to you, let alone on the subject of magic. If you couldn’t taste the prickle of his seiðr in the back of your throat every time you inhaled, you would have suspected someone else masquerading in his place.

One of Loki’s eyebrows drifts lazily upwards into a perfect arch. “Didn’t the _great_ sorcerer teach you that? I thought he was supposed to have more than smoke and mirrors to show.”

“The tripoint within our sigils pierces the multiverse,” you snap back, half on instinct and half in genuine irritation at Loki’s patronizing tone. “It’s like anchoring ourselves in Yggdrasil, same way the Bifrost roots with three points,” you add, trying to soften your tone just enough to wring out all the unnecessary hostility.

You steal a glance at Loki; he looks pensive, but then his eyes dart to yours. The light that flares in his gaze is almost….impressed. You look away quickly as the memory of your dream resurfaces yet again.

“Besides,” you say hurriedly, trying to snap yourself out of it, “I don’t cast. Not like you. I…alter.”

Your gaze falls to your hands and you flex your left hand involuntarily. You thought you’d gotten used to the feeling of Tony’s ring on your ring finger rather than the solid, heavier weight of your sling ring, but it still feels strange. The sight of your hand with a wedding band on is still unfamiliar as well, and almost as jarring—you send out a tiny tendril of your energy and twirl your fingers again, just to feel the sparks gather between your fingertips.

“But you could.”

Loki’s voice isn’t particularly loud or sharp, but it startles you all the same.

He meets the surprised jerk of your head with a cool, unperturbed gaze. As the pavement turns to sand beneath your feet, Loki’s hand envelops yours, fingers entwining so naturally that you barely notice—until he sends a ripple of magical energy down your joined hands.

You go to pull away, but his fingers hold you fast, forcing you to ride out the thrum; it’s not unpleasant, necessarily—in fact, the icy tingle of his seiðr is almost refreshing under the saturated sunlight and muted warmth of his hand—and Loki is _very_ gentle with the push, but it’s so _foreign_ that you can’t help but shiver.

Yet even in its unfamiliarity, there’s something unspeakably alluring about Loki’s energy; it isn’t like you haven’t felt it before, but never like this. It’s always been pointed and sharp, ready to slice anything in its way—this version of it is crisp and mysterious as always, but the danger is replaced by a sense of invitation.

His voice breaks through your fascinated stupor: “You _could_ cast. You have the ability to use your own energy to fuel spells rather than channel that of objects and beings around you, you just don’t know how to use it.”

“I—I…”

“Don’t use your energy to search for others. Just feel your own magic.”

Before you can voice the protest leaping to your parted lips, Loki’s fingers stroke against your skin and you feel his energy sweep back from your hand to his, pulling your own energy along with him; you resist for a moment out of sheer instinct—Loki’s energy is so immensely powerful, brushing past you like a tidal wave, and it’s all too reminiscent of your experience in the elevator.

His eyes meet yours, surprisingly concerned and open, and you realize as the pressure he exerts lessens that if he wanted to, he could absolutely drag your magical energy into his own body against your will, probably without breaking much of a sweat.

Loki’s thumb traces a tiny, gentle circle on your knuckle, and you remember how he had asked for permission in the same way before connecting his mind to yours, back in the hotel room.

_I trust him._

The thought comes as more of a revelation than you expected, but there’s no taking it back. With a slow inhale, you let go of your magical anchor and let your energy flow into Loki, mingling with his own seiðr.

His energy wraps around yours, cocooning you in his essence; you would describe it as being pressed flush against every part of him, but that isn’t quite right—there’s no feeling of suffocation, no sense of _him_ against _you_. It’s merely _more_. There is no degree of separation between the two of you, there’s not even a _two_ —poured into Loki like this, you can’t begin to tell where he ends and you begin.

_Let me show you what it is to cast._

It’s not his voice, it’s his entire being that resounds through you with the message. You try to make your assent known, but you have no idea if your efforts work—you can’t even tell if there is a you anymore, but Loki seems to understand. He feels amused when you sense him next, and it takes all the effort you can muster to maintain your physical body’s relaxed stroll down the beach while fixated on whatever it is that Loki (and you?) are doing.

_Just relax. You’ll understand in a moment._

His arm sweeps languidly upwards, fingers splaying across the blurry line where ocean meets sky and sand. Loki’s hand swings back down, fingers lingering for just a moment over a forgotten tube of sunscreen half-buried in the sand.

You keep your eyes fixed on it, although even if you didn’t, the connection you have with Loki’s energy affords you a view through his body’s eyes as well; the horizon floats, sparkling, over itself in a thousand shimmering waves of turquoise.

A spark flares in your shared fingertips, tingling up your arm. It snakes out and wraps tendrils of itself around the bottle; Loki’s fingers squeeze and the energy punctures through the structure of the tube, seeping through its atoms.

_Inanimate to inanimate. Animate to animate._

Loki doesn’t _do_ anything, but you feel your joined energies shift and roil around—no, _in_ that of the bottle, pushing and pressing until you feel it give—a burst of ice and smoke hits your nose, and you realize that you’re staring at a purple daisy where the sunscreen had been just seconds earlier.

The rattling sound that accompanies your shocked, sucked-in breath startles you further and prompts a snicker from Loki; he releases your hand and pulls his hand away—as his skin leaves yours, you can feel him retracting his magical presence from you. The image of a beach at the first wave of low tide comes to mind—suddenly empty and bare without its expected coat of seawater, still damp from its embrace and somehow longing for the water to rush in once more.

The corner of Loki’s mouth tilts up as he glances at you, taking your arm over his casually.

_You’re much easier to impress than I thought._

Your eyes cut through to him and you pull a face before looking back over the beach, pretending that your gaze isn’t drawn back to the bright purple petals, although your snark is tempered by ill-hidden awe. _Who said I was impressed? It’s a cute trick._

_Oh?_

You can taste his smugness. Loki is far too pleased with himself.

_Just a little party trick for my lady’s entertainment, I suppose. Very well, if it’s so boring to you, change it back._

_What?!_

Your eyes snap from the ocean to Loki’s wide, vulpine grin.

His eyes widen in mock surprise. _Surely you can do a ‘cute trick’. After all, aren’t you Strange’s_ personal _apprentice?_

You grit your teeth, unsure of which part of you recoils most viciously to his comment—or why. Loki’s eyes gleam as he leans in, arms wrapping around you, and whispers in your ear, “Do it.”

“Fine.” _But don’t—just stop standing so close, alright?_

Your panic leaches out a little into your mental bark, and you wince, but Loki (somewhat to your surprise) just nods and steps back, giving you a little distance. It’s not enough—you can still feel his power prickling at you, but it does help.

You exhale deeply, grounding yourself, before cautiously extending your personal energy towards the transformed flowers. You’ve never felt like your power was weak before, but without Loki’s vast reserves of energy surging alongside you and without the familiar strengthening focus of your sling ring, you feel like a novice all over again.

Another deep breath steels your nerves and bolsters your thread of magic; with a subtle spin of three fingers, you wrap it tightly around the flowers. Now…you weren’t quite sure how to replicate Loki’s seemingly effortless command over his seiðr to _change_ the nature of the flowers, but you couldn’t just stand there forever.

You clench your fist and compress your magic as forcefully as you can, tensing against the flowers. Your energy vibrates against its target; a huff of breath shoots from your lips as you concentrate and strain against the pressure—your magic flays against the flowers’, gaining tiny bits of ground…your eyes squeeze shut as you focus your energies and tighten your grasp—suddenly, something cracks and your energy floods the flowers, rushing over and around its being.

A grin splits your face as you spread your fingers and revert the transformation; the atoms under your magical grasp fly back into their original configurations, sending a loose buzz through your fingertips. You open your eyes and draw back your magic, unable to douse the bright, victorious grin stretching over your lips.

“I did it,” you tell Loki giddily, eyes darting back and forth from him to the sunscreen bottle lying on the beach. “I did it!”

His amused grin curls further as he admits, “Yes, you did.”

You pause, taking in the odd, pensive set of his eyes and a certain strange tension about his mouth. Loki stares at the bottle as well, but his expression is neither congratulatory (not that you had really expected it to be) nor mocking (you had deemed this more likely).

“Lo—?” you cut yourself off halfway, panicking before gratitude for Loki’s cover name starting with the same sound cluster surges over you.

His eyes sharpen instantly, mask descending over his face as he turns to you, bright white teeth bared in a smile. “Congratulations, wife dearest. It’s a very fun party trick to know, although if you tell your silly doctor who taught you, I doubt the party will last long.”

You swat him on the shoulder, concern diluted with exasperation.

He pauses, as though thinking of how best to slick his retort with poison, but merely shakes his head. When he does speak, it’s accompanied by him offering you his arm, a gallant image made thoroughly comedic by the fact that he is dressed like an obnoxious bachelor.

“Now, I do believe I promised you something ridiculous involving the ocean and _frolicking_ ,” he says with a roll of his eyes.

“ _Frolicking_ ,” you mock, hands settling on your hips before the sight of the ocean grows too tempting. It’s only partially for the show of it all that you call, “Race you in!” over your shoulder as you tear down the beach.

What is entirely for the operation is what you tell Loki mentally: _There’s a young couple sunbathing down the shore. They fit the specs of past targets. We should keep an eye on them, and see if our marks show up._

He doesn’t reply, but you feel him strolling after you—it’s odd, but after your brief period of utter inability to sense magic, you seem to have become hypersensitive. Loki’s seiðr tingles in the back of your mind as he approaches, growing stronger with every step in your direction.

You peel off the thin cotton sheath you’d worn over your swimsuit, forcing yourself not to turn and check if Loki was watching (you snuck a peek through your legs as you bent to unstrap your sandals anyway). He wasn’t, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed.

Your feet splash into the crush of a breaking wave and you squeal in delight at the sand sliding and swirling between your toes. The water balances perfectly at a heavenly point between refreshingly cool under the bronze heat of the sun and silky warm against your skin—you’re not embarrassed to admit that your excitement at plunging farther into the surf isn’t all that difficult to fake.

Seabirds squall in the air as you slow to a wade and turn back to the beach with a broad flourish of your arms, prepared to yell to Loki that he was a slowpoke and maybe splash a handful or two of water at him.

You were not prepared for your flung handful of ocean water to hit his very bare, very present torso. You were even less prepared for your cupped palm, caught up in the momentum of your motion, to slap over his pec.

Loki was surprisingly cool to the touch, even under the heat of the sun—you knew that his biological makeup meant his resting temperature was lower than that of humans, but the wet chill of his skin under your fingertips was still somewhat unexpected.

He raises an eyebrow at you and suddenly, you realize that you’ve just been gaping at him, hand still firmly attached to his chest. Your face burns more viciously than anything the sun sends down and you snatch your hand away.

“I didn’t think you would come that fast,” you blurt, blinking through the spray as you drop your hand to your side, forgetting the considerable amount of water in the way.

An entertained curl slides up Loki’s face and he reaches up to push a section of dark hair away from his eyes. The quirk of his lips deepens when your eyes dart to the flexing lines of muscle on his bare arms before shooting back guiltily to his face.

“That’s not something I hear very often.”

You get halfway into a squint before comprehension forces a splutter up your throat; noises that want to be protests sputter from your lips before a wave slams into your back and knocks you off balance—and directly into Loki.

He grunts ever so slightly as you crash into his chest, but there’s only a split second of give, leaning into Loki’s firm body with the push of water at your back as his spine flows back, before the pressure abates. The water is warm, lapping up from where it ripples at your waist, but ten points on the bared skin of your lower back, and two on your ribs persist in their chilliness; it takes a moment to realize that the dots of cold are where Loki’s fingertips rest over your skin.

Although his skin is cool where it touches yours, the arms wrapped around you thrum with a warmth that lies under the skin; Loki’s seiðr envelops you in an embrace that you would almost call tender. The water pulls him towards you slightly now, and your cheeks heat as you register the feeling of his skin on yours as the current slides over your bodies.

“Sorry,” you mumble as you push yourself off Loki and find your footing in the shifting sand again, trying not to look at him.

This is absolutely ridiculous. You’re ( _practically_ , you tell yourself) a member of the Avengers, a defender of the Earth, and a completely capable adult woman aside from that. This is a business trip, and you’re somehow managing to succeed at everything but your mission. Stephen is going to _kill_ you if he ever finds out that you’ve been so lax on the job, not to mention the dream you had last night—

“It’s fine.” Loki’s voice startles you out of your growing panic and into glancing up at him for a moment. There’s something odd in his face as he looks into the water beside you, something strange about the set of his mouth and in his eyes, but you catch a sudden movement behind him on the beach and gasp, all thoughts redirected immediately.

Your target couple is no longer peacefully sunbathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....I may need to change the rating to M. Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to change the rating or if you think it's fine as is! I place myself in your hands, dear readers (but only metaphorically, because #stayhome and #washyourhands, please for the love of God, wash your hands and be careful).   
> But yes, things are heating up for our dear Loki! Any guesses as to what the mystery couple has gotten up to?


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Reader is forcibly reminded that this isn't a vacation, Loki experiences emotional whiplash, and everyone's favourite married couple goes through traumatic bonding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild blood/gore
> 
> _elskan mín_ \- my love (Icelandic, but the goal was Old Norse, which will be important(ish) later!)
> 
> Also, if anyone is interested in what Ellaria looks like, I made and delineated a facial morph which I'll include in the end notes!

“We need to go.” You seize Loki’s hand and tug until you feel him start to move, then dive yourself into the water, swimming furiously for shore.

_Hold your breath,_ you tell him as you cut through the water, ignoring the sting of salt in your eyes. On your next stroke, you thread magical energy through your fingertips, channeling your power through Tony’s ring, and yank with your other hand, fingers flicking through the familiar motions underwater to grab the anchor points of the local dimension; the ocean surges past you as you tilt half your current plane of existence, bending the world in half at the shoreline.

Loki rushes past you with a flurry of seafoam; his seiðr tingles as he races past, kissing your skin with a prickle of his power. You release the bend on the dimension as he reaches the shore, your own arrival just seconds after; the two of you leap out of the surf into the sand, rolling together towards the couple’s umbrella.

Blood and saltwater cakes the sand under your feet and clumps between your toes as you run. Loki beats you by a few seconds to the entangled couple, seizing the woman’s shoulder and tearing her away from the man her teeth were buried in.

Likewise, you hook an arm around the man’s neck and rip him away from the woman; unfortunately, the finger gripped between his teeth comes backwards with him, spurting blood over you and the sand. A scream rises like a netted bird in your throat, choking you, but when the man shoves you off and lunges towards his partner again, your hands speak for you, whirling in the air with speed born of years of practice.

Amber sparks trace your fingers’ path, scribing out a sigil; power floods you as you clench your fist in the center and yank towards you; threads of burning light surge out, wrap around the man, and snatch him backwards. Spittle flies from his mouth as he lands unceremoniously on the sands by you; your hands dash through the air as you weave a second spell, praying that Tony’s ring can handle the toll—the ring sears your skin, and you can feel your connection flickering as you frantically spin together energy to bind the man in a magical cocoon.

Just as the final threads wrap around his ankles and melt into each other, securing his bonds, the door to your magical connection slams shut, sending an unpleasant ringing through your skull as you abruptly lose control over the magic energy. You squeeze your eyes shut and shake your head, trying to refocus and condense your clarity through the dizziness—your eyes shoot open again when a cry from Loki rings out.

He’s covered in blood, and your heart leaps into your throat before you realize that none of it is his; the woman is bleeding profusely from the shoulder, cheek, and some spot on her thighs where blood has soaked through her thin cotton sarong, sticking it to her legs. Her freshly-amputated finger still bleeds, flinging red through the air with her every movement. Blood mats her hair as well, and there’s a crazed look in her eyes that doesn’t bode well for either of you.

She wriggles against Loki’s grip, jerking towards the man you’ve secured. Loki’s teeth are gritted, and you can see how much he’s straining against her wild jerks. The smear of red on his chin and neck suggest that she got a successful headbutt or two in, supported by the slight daze in Loki’s eyes.

Loki slams his elbow into her temple and the woman crumples; he looks up at you, his message clear in his eyes, but you’re already spinning a second bondage sigil into place. Your body screams as you force your energy through the faltering connection, but you manage to seal the bloody woman on her knees in the sand before your own give out and you crumple, landing with a grunt on the beach. Your head spins as you gasp, sucking in air in an attempt to quell the searing burn exploding inside you as sand pills roughly under your cheek.

Cool arms lift you from the wet sand. Absently, you register the feeling of sand falling in clumps from your skin, leaving you with a gritty second skin. The sky and sand and sea spin around you as you lift your head, clutching at the pale arms supporting you.

Loki’s head comes into view, haloed and radiant, and you wonder, just for a moment in your disorientation, if you’ve somehow died or hallucinated an angel; the glossy black of his hair flashes crystalline and tosses rainbow fractals around the sleek, chiseled contours of his face. A drop of water slides down his cheek, catching the sunlight and flinging it away.

Your hand finds the hollow below his cheekbone before you can stop yourself from reaching up. The hard angle of his jaw is cool under your fingers but sticky with blood; your brow wrinkles at the feeling. Loki hauls you up into a sitting position, lips moving rapidly, but it isn’t until he shakes you a few times, dislodging your hand from his face, that his voice suddenly breaks through the bubble of silence:

“—answer me, dammit!”

Your lips are numb, but the ringing in your head quiets as you mumble, “Ask me a question, then.”

Loki releases you, only to seize your upper arms again as you wobble. You wrench out of his grasp to spit a mouthful of sand out, then shake your head as if to shed the remaining disorientation.

“What happened to them?”

You don’t know why you expect him to have the answer—it’s already evident that neither of you have any idea—but there’s something comforting about the way Loki looks over to where the couple writhes in the sand, brow furrowed, all the same.

Behind his stoic disquiet, the gears of Loki’s mind are racing—he’d caught traces of the elusive masked magical presence the two of you had sensed at Ellaria’s party, but its cloak had been too tightly woven for him to unfold without compromising himself or you. The two mortals you’d pointed out were utterly mundane—so why had they gone berserk?

He can smell no alcohol, no drugs—nothing but salt from the sea and the blood clumped in the sand. Whatever the magic at work, it was excellent at covering its tracks.

A low moan disturbs his thoughts—when he glances down at you again, it is with no little sense of alarm that he notes the greying of your face and just how much your hand trembles as you swipe sand away from your face.

“I just need to get some ice,” you mutter insistently, almost to yourself, and Loki’s gaze drops to your left hand and the thin curls of smoke rising from your blistering skin.

“ _Norns_.” The quiet swear is out in the air before he can stop himself—the surprise on your face as you turn to look at him is matched by his own. He almost looses a prayer to his mother before regaining his composure. “Come on.”

Your confusion lets him lead you a few steps before you stagger back from his grip, albeit weakly. “What are you doing? Hotel is that way,” you say in your best attempt at a normal, light voice, although some of your desperation leaches out when you add, “Loïc, please.”

Something in Loki’s eyes softens for just a moment as he takes your hand again and pulls you gently towards the rock outcroppings farther from shore.

“Just to the cove,” he says, fingers squeezing yours. You hesitate, debating mustering up the energy to mentally connect with him, and finally acquiesce—he’s on your side, you remind yourself despite the little voice sighing doubtfully in the back of your head.

The cove isn’t far, and there’s a little channel where a tunnel has formed in the rock ring; Loki leads you in, somehow always catching you right before a would-be nasty slip on the wet stone. The tunnel widens again, revealing a small pool sheltered from the ocean and the shore by black rock and open to the sky. The beach you came from is barely visible as a sliver of sand in the corner, although most of the cove is still hidden from sight. It’s breathtaking, but your breath is already being taken away by the pure fatigue seeping in through your bones, not to mention the pain beginning to fester in your left hand.

“Stay still,” Loki murmurs to you as he guides you into a sort of half-seated lean at the edge of the water. Seawater drips down the back of your neck from your waterlogged hair and you fight the urge to wipe it away. The pain surges with every beat of your heart, and your chest feels as though it’s barely holding itself together; it’s all you can do to keep yourself from collapsing completely.

Loki’s brow furrows ever so slightly as he sits beside you, folding his legs neatly to the side, and examines your hand. Gingerly, he starts to ease the ring off your finger; you suck in a sharp breath as the metal slides over burnt skin and flesh, and Loki stops immediately.

“Just do it,” you grit out, staring intently at the sparkle of sunlight on water.

“It’s going to hurt,” Loki objects, rather calmly. You tighten your jaw and don’t look away from the water—as long as you don’t see the skin slough off your finger, it won’t be real. “You’ll be in pain,” Loki says again, as if it weren’t obvious.

“I know, I’m not a child,” you reply tersely, trying to fight the slight slur blurring your words. “I can handle a little p—ow!”

Your gaze snaps to Loki, who (to his credit) only looks a little smug as he holds up your wedding ring.

“That hurt less than if you hadn’t been distracted.”

“You couldn’t have thought of anything else to distract me with?” you snap back, only to immediately regret it.

Loki’s lips curve up and his voice drips with devious suggestion as he says slowly, “I’ll be sure to be more creative next time.” His voice turns brisk as he holds out the ring, and you’re grateful. “Hold it. I need both hands for this.”

You turn the band over idly between your fingers and breathe deeply as you watch Loki take your left hand in both of his, carefully spreading your fingers to expose most of the charred, raw flesh. His palm presses into yours as his other hand passes lightly over the back of your hand, just close enough that you feel the chill of his skin graze yours.

The scent of his seiðr tingles in the air and soft viridian light pulses over the band burned into your finger; fascinated, you watch as the light coils around Loki’s skin like an affectionate cat. It chills your skin and eases the sting, although as Loki continues, a slight itch springs up over the area. Your skin begins to knit together before your very eyes and you realize that the itch is from Loki using his own seiðr to boost your healing process, not just anesthetize it as you had first assumed—before you can stop yourself, you blurt out,

“Why are you helping me?”

Loki doesn’t look up, but the refreshing cold surrounding your finger falters for a moment before returning in full force.

“Would you rather I didn’t?”

His voice is cool and measured, just like it had always been before this mission. You hesitate, weighing your words carefully before proceeding.

“No, I…I appreciate it. I just…you’ve never healed me before.”

He scoffs at that, eyes flicking up to yours for a moment before returning to your hand. His fingers swirl over your skin, sending ripples through the pleasant cold sensation, and you let out a quiet sigh of relief as the pain abates further.

Loki stares at your hand as though he can find the answer to his internal query in the invisible currents of seiðr blooming there. It’s right on the tip of his tongue to say that he’s never dared extend himself to you like this, that offering his magic in goodwill to you had never seemed like a possibility after how he had refused you. Instead, he stirs the seiðr into your burn almost vehemently (he has to hide the tremble of his hands somehow) and says coolly,

“Haven’t you learned from the others yet? I’m selfish, not magnanimous.”

There’s enough truth in his answer to make it slip out smoothly from his lips—not that Loki is _that_ averse to a well-placed falsehood, but he’s always been partial to the way half-truths duck just under the snug altar of morality. He turns his face towards you, making sure his visage is unreadable as he does so. Your confusion hurts a little, but he can’t bring himself to confess that the selfishness he refers to stems from his fear of rejection—after all, how could he fault you for suspecting him of some silver-tongued malevolence?

You stay silent, unable to dissect Loki’s response thoroughly enough to formulate your own. Instead, you watch as Loki finishes the healing process, fingertips fluttering over your hand and between your fingers to guide his seiðr. His motions are impossibly fluid, every angle of his hands effortlessly graceful. The light of his seiðr trails after him like the plumes of some fantastic bird in flight, painting the air between your skin and his with a delicate aurora. It’s gentle despite the power you can feel thrumming in its current, and there’s a softness to its translucent curves that is worlds removed from the fierce, angular gleam you’ve seen when Loki uses his seiðr as a weapon.

Without Tony’s ring, your magical energy radiates from your skin and floats unchanneled around you, but you can feel the particles of your magic mingling with the unbound energy of the universe in the air; where Loki’s seiðr sings in your blood alongside your own current of power, these drifting motes of magic feel like a whispered promise.

Your eyes flicker to the smears of drying blood on Loki’s pale skin and the purpling splotch on his chin where the woman’s skull crashed into him. His eyes are lowered, fixed on the swirl of seiðr, allowing you to escape his notice as you quietly close your eyes and even your breathing ( _he probably just doesn’t accord it much importance_ , a voice inside your head whispers).

The fingers of your free hand clench into a fist as you focus on the hum in your veins and isolate the free magic around you—you aren’t at all confident in your ability to replicate the casting Loki taught you earlier, but you simply don’t have enough energy left to heal Loki entirely on your own. It takes everything you have to keep your face passive as you seize your own floating magic and condense it, compressing it into a net together with as much free magic as you can gather.

Pressure builds behind your eyes, pain flaring in your sinuses—a throbbing drumbeat starts in your temples, but you push past it, struggling to condense the conglomerate of magic even further. It slowly obeys; you painstakingly trace the base of a healing sigil into your palm with the tip of your thumb and guide your gathered energy into the center.

The slow, heavy thump of your heart thuds in your eardrums and your palm begins to prickle—the sensation intensifies, spreading across the lines in your skin until it ignites into the familiar, pleasant thrum of manipulable magic.

Your eyelids lift as your eyes snap down; the warbling heat clenched in your fist glows amber through your skin like flame through a paper lantern. Gingerly, you open your fist, fingers curling out hesitantly to reveal a shivering, half-formed healing sigil. The lines of light are perfectly defined where you had drawn the base with your thumb, but beyond that, writhe like living petals, diffusing out of the intricate weave like smoke. It’s not neat (Stephen would absolutely have an aneurysm if you ever cast this sloppily in the Sanctum), and you can already feel the strain of casting without an instrument to help focus your energy, but you know it’s stable enough to heal that bruise.

Loki’s eyes leave his work, darting first to the sharp spikes of your wavering sigil before landing on your face. Before he has the chance to say anything and before you can waste time wishing that your magic was sinuous and elegant like his, you lean forward and lift your glowing palm to Loki’s face.

He stiffens but allows your sigil to connect; you know that he could have dodged, or even slapped your hand away, but the only lapse in concentration you can afford is to bite your lower lip as you will your woven mixture of personal and gathered energy through the sigil pathways and into Loki’s body.

The warmth in your hand roils before finally flowing from you to Loki, siphoning with it the buzz under your skin. Your attempt to replicate Loki’s elegant motion results in something more like the actions of a deranged puppeteer, so you settle for a slow, largely stationary stirring movement with your wrist. It works better with the circular sigil anyway, you tell yourself staunchly, but a tiny twitch of Loki’s lips when you abandon your original movement plops a drop of embarrassment into your chest anyways.

He lets you heal him in silence that insists on hovering somewhere between comfortable and bizarre. Despite the healing of your hand having finished just after your sigil ignited, Loki doesn’t remove his hands from yours, choosing instead to idly stir the surface of your skin with his fingertips and a hint of seiðr.

By the time the edges of the bruise on his chin begin to recede like a those of a puddle shrinking under full sun, Loki has settled on drawing light circles around all your knuckles. His expression suggests it’s out of boredom, but the tenderness in his touch does its best to convince you otherwise.

When you’ve managed to lighten up the bruise to a shadow, Loki slides your ring back onto your finger before shifting his weight and moving his hands away. It’s devastating how adrift your hand feels without his.

“Done,” you manage to say evenly a few seconds later. Your arm cramps as you lower it and a genuine wave of pride washes over you as you inspect your handiwork. Loki’s chin is seamless ivory once again, though still smeared with flaking blood. You dip your hand into the water at your feet and rub your thumb over the rust-colored crust without thinking.

Loki freezes again and you stall, brain slamming into a wall at Loki’s terse, wide eyes and the flare of his nostrils. His eyes lock onto yours, shielded by the mirror-like sheen he’s mastered so well, and a stuttering, uncomfortable laugh issues immediately from your mouth.

Your thumb is still pressing into his face.

The feeling of water dripping down your wrist jolts you back into motion and you hastily swipe your wet fingers over the remaining streaks of reddish-brown before snatching your hand back to your side.

Loki’s expression does absolutely nothing to indicate whether snark or apology is expected, and you’re seriously considering just pretending nothing happened at all.

A drop of water plinks down from his jaw and Loki opens his mouth, face still betraying nothing, so you splash your hand in the water again noisily and say hurriedly, “Now we’re even. Let’s get back to the room, we should update the team.”

You stand before he can object and march out of the cove, each hurried step fueling the churn in your chest.

Loki stares after you for a moment before slowly pushing himself upright and following, hopping agilely over the shallow pool to catch up. The stoic set of your face doesn’t alarm him, but the panic roaming in your eyes does—this was not part of the plan.

To be honest, neither is the intensity of his own emotion right now. It’ll be a miracle if he ever manages to fully process how perfectly his face fit into the tenderness of your hand or the way your touch sent his soul spinning. He can still feel your phantom touch on his skin, still recall the determined fluidity with which you leaned in and healed him. It’s painfully similar to the fiery, battle-worthy grace that he still sometimes dreams of, and to have been doused so suddenly with such a fleeting dose has Loki reeling in panicked delight.

He still isn’t sure what he would have said— _Thank you? Why did you bother?_ _Did you actually get a concussion?_ —if you hadn’t absolutely shot down the idea that you’d healed him out of pure compassion, and that bothers him almost more than your sudden rush to distance yourself.

Loki is so lost in thought that he nearly misses the slurred clop of hoofbeats on sand in the distance. Nearly, but not quite.

A glance up reveals a figure on horseback approaching from inland. Loki squints and catches the gleam of sunlight off strawberry blond waves. His blood quickens and before he thinks it through, a burst of seiðr teleports him to your side.

 

Loki’s arm slings around your waist so naturally that you lean into him without a second thought, and it’s only after several seconds pass that you think to wonder how he could have caught up to you so quickly. You turn from the shore to face him, lips already forming a question, but one hand slides from your waist to catch the back of your head as you pivot—before you quite know what’s happening, Loki bends and buries his head in the crook of your neck, his breath a heated whisper on your goose-prickled skin.

Your hands fly up to his still-damp hair, fingers tangling in the inky roots on reflex, though you aren’t sure whether your first instinct is to wrench him away or pull him closer. His fingers splay over your waist and the pressure of his hand on the back of your neck lessens; you pray that he can’t feel the rapid beat of your pulse despite the closeness of his lips to your quivering throat.

_Cover me, quickly._

Before Loki has even finished speaking, you feel the tingle of his seiðr working beside your skin, raising even more goosebumps with its chill. Your mind snaps into order and you tilt your head, your free hand coming up as you twist your body to cover Loki’s from the view of whoever is currently approaching you on horseback.

_We’ve been enjoying each other in the coves. No idea that anything happened on the beach, and it’s horrifying if something did. If there’s any blood left on my face it’s from something embarrassing involving the rocks._

Your cheeks burn at the implications of Loki’s proposed cover story, but you agree anyways; there’s no time to argue and you’re in no shape to quarrel with him anyway, not with your legs quivering beneath you like reeds.

The hoofbeats slow and a rich, slow chuckle rolls out; you whip around, trusting that Loki will have finished whatever it was he needed to cast for, and slap a too-bright, embarrassed grin of greeting on your face.

It becomes a tad realer when you recognize the woman astride the bay horse in front of you as she pushes her sunglasses up into her hair.

“I thought it was you two,” Ellaria says pleasantly. Her skin gleams almost unnaturally smooth under the sun, the pink-kissed pallor you’d seen last night replaced by a light, nutty gold that’s nearly as burnished as the trappings on her saddle. The white of her teeth is painfully brilliant against her glossy pink lips as she continues with a nod towards the beach, “Gorgeous today, isn’t it? I love a good beachside ride.”

Her eyes linger on you as she says it, and despite the innocence coating her friendly smile, you fight a shiver.

“Same here,” Loki picks up for you, arm slinging around you with an easy, practiced grin; you lean back into his grasp with a slight sense of relief and a tiny nod for appearance’s sake, feeling only the slightest bit perverted as you slide your own hand around him, fingertips resting lightly over the sculpted contour of his abs. It’s unnerving how well you fit into him, and you already know that you’ll be lying awake weeks from now trying to forget how it feels.

It’s for the realism of the undercover, you tell yourself, insisting more firmly as you bite back a hum of pleasure when Loki absentmindedly starts drawing circles over your skin with his fingertips. It’s just a part of the job.

“But I hope your friend didn’t just abandon you,” Loki says, with such a poignant rise in inflection that your own heart pangs. “Riding partners make everything more fun.”

You force an agreeable smile to your lips and settle for a quick pinch to remind Loki to curb in his own fun.

Ellaria quirks an eyebrow, tipping her head to the side slightly. “Can’t agree more.” Something charming flickers at the edge of her voice as she nods towards you and asks, “Had a good ride, then?”

Your cheeks explode into what feels like a killer sunburn and you hear yourself laugh, far too rapidly. You’d been wrong. Loki wasn’t going to kill you, but this mission would still be the death of you—you hope Tony is cringing on the other side of the comms.

Ellaria does you a favor and interrupts, not quite teasingly, before you can try to respond: “Sweetheart, your legs are shaking under you—must have been the ride of your life if you still can’t stand.”

Her smile shifts from you to Loki and the immediate effect is that of a cloud sliding over the sun; you fight the urge to sigh in relief and sag against Loki’s side.

“What are your plans for dinner tonight?”

Her eyes turn back on you, in their terrible but intoxicating radiance; again, the same feeling of silky, dry heat rustles against your skin and you find yourself torn between flinching away and leaning in closer. “I’d love to introduce you both to my friend.”

That crystalline blue gaze flicks from you to Loki and back again, glinting under the sun like gunmetal. “It’s a pity you missed each other at the party last night.”

You glance at Loki, but he’s still smiling at Ellaria, wearing the same polite face you imagine disguised the whirring gears and dagger-sharp diplomacy that filled his youth in Asgard’s halls. Somehow, you can tell that Loki’s stymied by something, and as swiftly as his mind is dismantling it, he’s moving too slow to keep ahead of Ellaria like this, so you find your voice again, just in time:

“Really such a shame. We’d love to join you for dinner—and your riding partner, of course.”

The smile that pulls over your lips carries the same weight a triumph over Loki would have back in New York. It feels like blowing a blade out from between your lips and watching it slice ever so neatly into Ellaria’s armor before twisting with a flash of your teeth. Watching her grin harden ever so slightly and knowing you’ve struck a nerve is more than enough to keep you going.

“Sound good,” you almost falter, a thousand and one pet names for Loki flashing through your mind before you manage to say somewhat genuinely, “ _elskan_?”

Your questioning tone is as much a result of your acting as it is your sudden second-guessing of how to pronounce a word you’d only ever heard once: from Thor, fleetingly, when you’d asked him to read it from the manuscript you had been studying at the time. _“It’s used between lovers_ , _”_ he’d told you by way of explanation, and that had been the end of it.

Apparently, your approximation of Thor’s rolled, natively fluent rumble was close enough to snap Loki out of it; as you turn to him, a flash of actual concern diluting your façade, his touch softens against you, drawing you into an embrace that doesn’t feel posed at _all_ , before suddenly his lips are pressing against your forehead and it feels _so_ good—Loki is kissing you, _kissing you_ , in the sweet way the scent of freshly baked pastries kiss the air out of the oven.

“Yes, _elskan_ _mín_ ,” he whispers against your forehead, and you can feel the ecstasy settle over you like a blanket. It fogs your brain like a dream, and it occurs dimly to you that perhaps you should have been a little more reserved with your feelings if you weren’t prepared to handle Loki’s false reciprocation.

The glimpse you catch of Loki’s face as he draws back is radiant, open and gentle in a way that you’ve never seen him before; there’s nothing sharp about his smile, nothing dangerous about the glint of sun off his tender eyes. It lasts only a second before he finishes turning to Ellaria and all that delicate, naked softness is gone, vanished beneath the familiar, glassy shield that Loki uses to fool everyone in this world and the next. The ache in your chest groans.

The danger returns to Loki’s smile as he tells Ellaria, “I’m looking forward to it—after all, your riding partner needs to own up to what he’s done.”

“Oh?” Something shifts, slanting in her eyes like an alarm.

“Yes.” You could replace a crescent moon with Loki’s smile, in all its sharp, cold luminosity. His eyes widen in deliberate innocence. “No gentleman forsakes the company of a beautiful woman on a ride, especially if it was planned. Simple courtesy, Ms. Blake.”

Loki’s smug satisfaction rises to the surface of your skin accompanied a light chuckle; a phantom flavor of toffee floats over your tongue as he glances warmly at you, prompting your own shy half-smile in response.

The sound of Ellaria’s laugh is sinuous, but you can hear her irritation in its core. The sun glimmers off her slim wrist as she raises her hand and bends her head forward to tuck a stray, perfectly textured wave of hair behind her ear. Your eyes follow the grace of her arm, captivated despite the growing unease rippling through you.

Her eyes flash up, startlingly blue against her even tan—had that perfect smattering of freckles been there last night?—and catch yours for a moment.

“Lovely,” she says, and something about it feels like a tripwire. When she speaks again, however, her voice is all grainy warmth, spilling over you like toasted sugar, “We’ll see you two tonight, then. Rosaria’s? It’s a block or so from the hotel, best risotto I’ve ever had.”

“Tonight, then.” You’ve never heard anyone but Loki manage to produce a voice so simultaneously, meticulously suave and vaguely threatening. It’s far from the first time you’ve heard this blend, but it still makes you wonder how he honed its edge to balance so perfectly.

You’re still stuck in the throes of your marveling when Loki turns and presses another quick kiss to your forehead—it’s over before you realize it’s happened, leaving you with just the lingering heat of Loki’s lips grazing your skin and the gentle touch of his hand as he brushes a bit of sand from your cheek. He’s not looking at you when he says, “It’s a date,” but it’s impossible to ignore the slow stroke of his fingers over your side, and you can’t quite figure out whose sake he’s being so affectionate for.

“I can’t wait.” Ellaria offers you both a sunny smile before a tap of her ankles sends her horse trotting obediently back over the sands. Halfway down the beach, she turns to toss a grin and a parting wave over her shoulder; both you and Loki raise a hand in return, but what surprises you is the short, relaxed laugh that spills from Loki’s mouth when he turns to you again.

“Can you walk back?”

The lack of barb in his voice catches you off guard and it takes you a moment to find your voice.

“I—yes, bu—wait, shouldn’t we go after her?!”

Panic flashes through you like lightning, spearing you through the chest and momentarily minimizing the throbbing ring in your head.

“She’s heading back to the hotel, she’ll see—on the beach, those people!” you babble, pointing furiously down the stretch of sand and beginning to march after Ellaria’s now long-vanished figure.

Loki snags your wrist and whirls you back before you manage more than a few steps away.

“Sweetheart,” he starts, and the sudden, gaping difference between his performed affection and whatever had hit you with “Yes, _elskan mín_ ” slaps you like an icy wave. “I’m sure she’ll be tactful.”

His mental energy carries a spiral of bubbly mint with it when he sweeps into your mind, every bit the domineering, princely presence you’d anticipated all those months ago.

_And how would you distract her, my dear?_

Loki’s lips twitch as he cuts you a side glance and the taste of mint grows almost overwhelming in the back of your brain. _Were you planning on warning our dear dinner guest about the bloody cannibal couple? Or perhaps you’d rather have diverted her entirely?_

He sounds genuinely curious, and it’s beginning to creep you out. You stare at him for a moment before responding, debating in the meantime whether or not there’s some sort of spell affecting or controlling him. It doesn’t help that he’s entirely correct—stopping Ellaria now would just help further any suspicions she may already have about the two of you.

_I just feel like we’re missing too many pieces,_ you admit at last. _Nothing is fitting together._

Loki sobers a bit at that, but there’s still a strange levity in his words that feels just a little too dangerous, in a completely new way.

_That’s what tonight is for_ , he tells you calmly, and the dream you’d had that morning leaps back to the forefront of your mind in vivid Technicolor. Loki, by some stroke of luck, doesn’t take notice of your sudden silence, and continues, _Ellaria’s appearances have been conveniently overlapping with ours, but there’s not enough to put together yet. She could just be a nosy little human with too much idle money…_

_Mhm,_ you offered, your own mind whirring as you tried to string yourself back to full functionality without tipping off Loki. An involuntary shiver wracks your body and you realize how chilly it’s gotten after your impromptu dip in the ocean and everything that had followed; Loki grips your shoulder with a steadying hand and you flinch away from the sudden cold with a yelp before you can help it.

His eyes go stone cold and glassy before you know it, and by the time you reach out a hand, an apology tumbling tastelessly from your lips, Loki’s face is masked completely by the aloof, untouchable expression Strange still swore was his actual reflection.

_Loki, wait_ , you try, but the damage is already done—Loki doesn’t even make a pointed quip before beginning the walk back, hand stiff in yours. The silence of his reaction twists in the pit of your stomach worse than the tension you can feel rippling under his skin, and by the time you reach the hotel again, it’s a tangible ache.

It’s his silence that lets you know he’s really hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *doesn't post update for months and then misses the weekly update schedule*  
> Also me: *posts a 6k word chapter*
> 
> Hope you guys are enjoying! Poor Reader, poor Loki...Lots of stuff goes down in this chapter and I'm really looking forward to any theories or questions you might have! Leave 'em in the comments down below to make! my! day! 
> 
> If you want to find out what Ellaria looks like, here you go:  
>   
> I'll take a request from anyone who can correctly guess which 3 celebrity faces I used!


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